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ESSAY ON MANNER. 

WITH OTHER ESSAYS 



RALPH WALDO, EMERSON 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph.D., L.H.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



ESSAYS ON 

MANNERS, SELF-RELIANCE 

COMPENSATION, NATURE, FRIENDSHIP 



lonffmanfif* (EnffUfil) Clafigicg 



^..^.. -■ EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ON 

MANNERS, SELF-RELIANCE, 

COMPENSATION, NATURE, 

FRIENDSHIP 

EDITED 

WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

EUNICE J. CLEVELAND, A. M. 

HEAD OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, NORTHROP COLLEGIATE SCHOOL, 
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 




LON^GMAKS, GEEEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE AND 30th STREET, NEW YORK 

PRAIRIE AVENUE & 25th STREET, CHICAGO 

1915 






Copyright, 1915 

BY 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



©CI.A41I'770 
nrj -41915 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. Life of Emerson vii 

II. Emerson's Teaching xxiii 

III. How to Study the Essays xxxii 

Bibliographical Note xl 

Chronological Table xliii 

ESSAYS 

Manners 1 

Self-reliance 27 

Compensation 59 

Nature 83 

Friendship 103 

Notes 123 

V 



INTRODUCTION 



I. LIFE OF EMERSON" 
(May 25, 1803— April 27, 1882) 

We have few more intimate biographical records than 
Emerson's ; fewer still that cause so little disappointment 
in the reading. In the wealth of material at hand, — 
in his Journal and letters as well as in the personal 
reminiscences of a great band of friends and admirers, — 
we are brought face to face with a personality that can 
but win by the "cumulative power of character/^ Even 
those who met Emerson with prejudices to be overcome 
were conquered by his presence. "In an instant all my 
dislike vanished," said Crabbe Robinson, in reporting 
the first glimpse caught of him across a crowded room. 
One and another bear evidence to the same personal 
power with a concurrence that would be tiresome, were 
it not for the strong individual conviction in each case. 

Two other brothers, Edward and Charles, both younger, 
shared this power; William, the oldest, was likewise 
gifted with unusual intellect. The family lived in Bos- 
ton, where the father, William Emerson, was a brilliant 
Congregational minister, prominent in religious, social, 
and literary circles till his death in 1811. That, event 
put a new face on the circumstances of the family ; only 
the most rigid and careful economy, supplemented by 
the generous continuance of part of her husband's salary 



viii INTRODUCTION 

aud the help of relatives, enabled the mother, Ruth 
Haskins Emerson, to keep the family together and give 
them the education due to their great intellectual gifts 
and to the traditions of the family. "They were born 
to be educated," their aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, once 
declared. 

This aunt was a force to be reckoned with. Odd to 
the point of absurdity, she yet had so fine an intellect 
and so true a nature that she gained and held the respect 
of her nephews. She was at times an inmate of their 
home; at other times her peculiarities drove her to the 
quiet of the country. But absent or present, she con- 
tinually urged them on by the spur of her spiritual 
ambition to live lives of independent thought, to dis- 
regard fame and social advancement, and to fit them- 
selves for true leadership. The early correspondence 
between her and Ealph Waldo Emerson is scarcely less 
valuable than the first few years of his Journal in trac- 
ing the rise of his fine independence of thought. 

Through a childhood filled with work and books, sea- 
soned by the hardships of poverty, and straitened by 
Puritan discipline, one catches glimpses of the Emerson 
of later days. He made efforts at poetical and orator- 
ical composition, flat and feeble to be sure, but earnest ; 
and when, in his twelfth year, the family went to live 
for a time with their step-grandfather, Dr. Ezra Ripley, 
at the Old Manse in Concord, Waldo and his two 
younger brothers were set free in nature. "They took 
that valley for their toy," writes Emerson in The Dirge, 
and alludes to games that filled the Concord woods and 
cornfields with echoes from the past. When he came 
back as a man, those woods were already dear to him; 
and the imagination that in boyhood had wakened 
through them to a love of nature, found there in manhood 



INTRODUCTION ix 

as nowhere else, a way of feeling and seeing that deepened 
into philosophical vision. 

In the Latin School at Boston Emerson did not dis- 
tinguish himself; but at fourteen he was ready for 
Harvard. William had preceded him there, and later 
the two younger boys followed him. All were obliged 
to mingle study and work and to live more frugally than 
was good for boys of their delicate constitution. On en- 
trance Emerson was President's Freshman, or messenger, 
and later eked out his expenses by waiting on table, 
tutoring, and teaching a country school. Pie was urged 
on meanwhile by the stern-spirited women at home to 
rise above material inconveniences and become an in- 
dependent, moral spirit. Those who knew him described 
him even in his freshman days as "kindly, affable, and 
self contained.^^ He took his degree in 1821 without 
any distinction except the rather equivocal one of being 
chosen class poet after seven others had refused the 
office; but though he bore from college little honor and 
less knowledge of mathematics, he had "consoled himself 
for his defects,'^ as his Journal long years afterwards 
states, "with Chaucer and Montaigne, with Plutarch 
and Plato at night." Other authors we find mentioned 
here and there as forming part of this privately acquired 
education, — Otwa.y, Massinger, Swift, Addison, Sterne, 
and many historical writers and poets of his own day. 
Shakespeare he knew from beginning to end. 

After graduation he turned to teaching in earnest, 
assisting in a school for young ladies which William, 
"a grave professor even at eighteen," had started in his 
mother's house. In a short time he was left in sole 
charge by William's departure for Europe. The task 
was far from congenial, for he fell short of his brother's 
dignity and was often teased for his bashfulness and 



X INTRODUCTION 

blushing cheeks by his roguish pupils. In after years 
they praised his work as a teacher, but he looked upon it 
with regret because he had made it too much a matter 
of dry form, keeping the best of his thoughts to himself. 
His Journal of those days shows that even then he was 
cherishing ideas which were to become an important part 
of his later philosophy. 

He continued his teaching till free from debt, then in 
1825 went back to Harvard to study theology. But he 
made the mistake, for the sake of economy, of taking a 
damp, dimly lighted room. Eheumatism, weak eyes, and 
a stricture in the chest were the results, so that in 1826 
when he was "approbated" as a Unitarian minister, he 
was in a fair way to be a confirmed invalid. Rev. 
Samuel Ripley, the uncle who had always stood behind 
the family most generousl}^, sent him south. Lazy days 
in St. Augustine restored his general health, though 
his lungs were long weak. But prudence and "hope," 
as his son has said, conquered ill-health at last, and set 
him free for his life work. 

After the preliminaries usual to a young man starting 
out in the ministry, Emerson at the age of twenty-six 
was ordained assistant to Rev. Mr. Ware of the Second 
Church, Boston, and soon succeeded to the sole pastor- 
ship. The same 3'ear, 1829, he married Ellen Tucker of 
Concord, New Hampshire, a joyous, gracious woman, 
whose influence it is easy to trace in several passages 
in the essays of this book. One of Emerson's parish- 
ioners describes her as a flowerlike woman whose delicate 
health made her practically a recluse from the start ; once 
each Sunday they saw her when she came in a carriage 
to hear her husband's sermon. These years of Emerson's 
pastorate have an ever-increasing interest to the student 
of his life. They were outwardly prosperous, free from 



INTRODUCTION xi 

the hardships of early years and from anxiety for his 
family. But the outer events sink into insignificance 
before the importance of the mental life he was living. 
The long lists of books suggested by the J ournal of those 
years show that he was pursuing a course of study that 
was bringing him into the great current of the thought 
of his age. The number and variety of these literary 
influences must have proved distracting to a less balanced 
intellect, but to Emerson they were all leading quietly 
to one belief that was to give direction to his whole 
life. He was making a thoughtful comparati^■e study 
of the old Greek philosophers and the modern thinkers 
in the same line, w^ith close attention to psychology and 
science. His favorite authors still appear in the lists, 
but several are added, — Landor, Goethe, Carlyle, and 
Sw^edenborg. The sense of the beauty and harmony of 
the world that had often wakened him at night when he 
was a boy with a feeling of indescribable happiness, was 
deepened by this reading ; and to it w^as added a growing 
reverence for the mysterious working of man's mind. 
The sermons in which he gave public expression to these 
thoughts are unpublished, but those who have read them 
in manuscript describe them as conventional in tone, 
differing little from the usual sermon of his day and 
church. Those who heard them, however, say they had 
a singular power of making the life of everyday seem 
new and very real. 

The years of this service were limited. In 1831 Mrs. 
Emerson died. September of the following year ended 
Emerson's connection with his church. He proposed 
that they should adopt a simpler form of the communion 
service in which the elements of bread and wine should 
not be used. He had come to feel acutely that for him 
worship must be absolutely free from formalism, and if 



xii INTRODUCTION 

the church did not adopt his suggestion he must resign. 
But the church stood by the traditional form, although 
there was no unkindliness of spirit on either side. In 
December Emerson, practically severed from the pro- 
fession for which he had been preparing all his life, set 
sail for Europe. His farewell letter to his church is the 
best comment on the situation; one feels on reading it 
that he would always be a leader of men^s thoughts 
whether he held a pulpit or not. 

Of his European trip we have an account in his 
Journal and letters, and in the beginning of English 
Traits. He went by way of the Mediterranean and 
traveled northward through Italy. The churches made 
a great impression upon him; again and again Iiq 
describes the feeling of awe they awakened. His com- 
ments on Italian art are full of self-revelation: ^'I 
make a continual effort not to be pleased except by that 
which ought to please me," he notes in Florence, ^^and 
I walked coolly round and round the marble lady"; "I 
collect nothing that can be touched- or tasted or smelled, 
neither cameo, painting, nor medallion, but I value much 
the growing picture which the ages have painted and 
which I reverently survey." Throughout his journey 
his supreme interest was in men. He reconstructed in 
his imagination the cities of the past and brought their 
heroes back to walk their streets; and he visited the 
great men of the present. In Florence he became ac- 
quainted with Landor, and in England he saw Coleridge 
and Wordsworth. 

But the event of his journey was his visit to Carlyle, 
then comparatively unknown. He made his way from 
Dumfries to Craigenputtock, where he found the "tall, 
gaunt man of clifflike brow" with whom he had formed 
a book acquaintance in America. He stayed only over 



INTRODUCTION xill 

night, but he "talked and heard talk to his heart's 
content," as Carlyle wrote to his mother. One may well 
believe it from the range of topics that were discussed 
in the short visit, from favorite books to "that plastic 
little animal man"^ and the immortality of the soul. In 
August he wrote to Mr. Ireland after his visit to Carlyle, 
''The comfort of meeting a man is that he speaks sin- 
cerely, . . . that he is above the meanness of pretend- 
ing to knowledge which he has not.'^ He had not found 
Carlyle all that he had expected, but he had found him 
a man, and the two sealed a lifelong friendship. It was 
Emerson who first published Sartor Resartus in its 
non-periodical form, and later other works of Carlyle, 
sparing neither time nor expense in the service of his 
friend. Carlyle for his part interested himself in 
Emerson^s literary success in England. The friendship 
is left to us in permanent record in one of the most 
interesting books of the nineteenth century. The Cor- 
respondence of Carlyle and Emerson. 

In 1833 Emerson returned to America, confirmed in 
his determination to wait patiently the issue of events. 
Already he was revolving plans for his first book. He 
settled in Concord, drawn partly by his brother Charles's 
influence and partly by his boyhood love of the place. 
It was convenient also to East Lexington, where he 
accepted a call to act as temporary pastor. He and his 
mother first lived in the Old Manse; but in 1835, upon 
his engagement to Lydian Jackson, he bought the house 
on the old stage road to Boston which became his home 
for the rest of his life. The early days in Concord were 
saddened by news of the death of his brother Edward, 
for whom Emerson had cherished an almost adoring 
admiration. The youngest brother Charles did not long 
survive ; he died two years later, in 1836. Him Emerson 



Xi V IN TROD UCTION 

describes as "clean aud sweet in life, untempted almost/^ 
The loss of these brothers was too sore ever to be 
repaired, for they had been from earliest years so closely 
bound to Emerson that it was as if a part of his mental 
faculty had gone with them. He bore their death bravely, 
as he had borne that of his wife, but it is undeniable that 
to this bereavement must be traced in some measure that 
gentle reticence of spirit which marked his social inter- 
course outside his own family circle. 

Emerson began his literary career in 1836 with the 
publication of Nature, "the azure book" that Carlyle 
welcomed with warm praise as a foundation for work of 
real value to the race. Carlyle's prophecy proved true, 
but at first there were few who shared his enthusiasm. 
This first book of Emerson may almost be called an 
epitome of his later teaching. It is remarkable as well 
for the beauty of its expression; many of its passages 
are prose poetry of delicate but inspiring imagination. 

Two years earlier, by speaking before the Mechanic 
Institute of Boston, Emerson had entered on the field of 
lecturing. New England lyceums, called into existence 
by a general desire for culture, attracted many speakers 
from home and abroad, but none who exerted a deeper 
influence than he. Almost every year as long as his 
health permitted him, he delivered lecture courses in 
Boston. At first he gave besides only an occasional ad- 
dress in his own village or in some other New England 
town, but gradually his engagements called him farther 
and farther from home, — to New York, Philadelphia, 
Pittsburgh, and westward, until after 1850 he made 
trips even beyond the Mississippi. In the winter of 
1847-48 he gave a series of courses in England and 
Scotland. Of Emerson as a lecturer we have many 
descriptions. He was singularly impressive, though his 



INTRODUCTION XV 

manner was quiet and his style unoratorical. He read 
from notes, handling his manuscripts with hesitation 
and looking out over his audience with a farseeing gaze 
that was at once kindly and remote. He had his hearers 
with him from the start, even those who did not under- 
stand what he was saying, and passed from one of his 
quaintly humorous illustrations to his gravest teach- 
ings without a break in their responsive attention. The 
compelling principle was his high, serene character; that 
was "the something deeper than his words'^ to which 
Lowell alludes in his essay on Emerson as a lecturer. 
It spoke in every word and in his quiet presence, but 
especially in his voice, — ''that undertow of the rich 
baritone that swept minds from their foothold into 
deeper waters with a drift they could not and would 
not resist/' By force of this quiet, impressive personality 
Emerson made the lecture platform take the place of the 
pulpit he had left, and in a few years ceased even to serve 
as supply, devoting himself instead to this lay preaching. 
His lecture work extended over a period of forty-seven 
years, the last address being that of 1881. 

Two of his addresses deserve especial mention as of 
historical importance. One is The American Scholar, 
the Phi -Beta Kappa oration of 1837; and the other the 
address before the senior class of Divinity College, Cam- 
bridge, in 1838. The first because of its strong appeal 
for a truly American thought and literature has been 
called "our intellectual Declaration of Independence." 
The second is scarcely less significant in its bearing on 
religious history. In it Emerson eloquently urges the 
need for simplifying and spiritualizing faith. This 
address set a ban upon his religious teaching and closed 
the doors of Harvard against him for nearly thirty 
years. The change of sentiment wrought during that 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

time is marked by the fact that at the close he was given 
the honorary degree of LL.D., was made an Overseer of 
the college, and was invited again to deliver the Phi 
Beta Kappa address. 

The record of the thirty years that worked the change 
is quiet, but not uneventful, though the events are of a 
nature that gain little from a brief telling. They con- 
cern themselves, aside from his literary work, chiefly 
with the placid family and neighborhood life of Concord. 
Emerson was at his best in his home. He was very fond 
of children, and to the three who remained to him after 
the death of his eldest child, Waldo, he gave a most 
delightful companionship. Few passages in his letters 
are iiner than those in which he sends messages from 
England to the children at home, ils a townsman he 
fulfilled his duties faithfully. The bucket of the fire 
department, his son says, was always in the entry, and he 
was long a member of the school committee. He was 
particularly interested in the town-meeting, holding it 
in respect as a typical American institution; but he 
seldom spoke there, and indeed carried himself always 
as a modest, retiring householder. Nevertheless the 
rank and file of the townsmen, those who gathered on 
the corner or before the tavern to discuss important 
topics, stood in awe of him. At the appearance of his 
tall, slender figure the group melted away or stood 
tongue-tied. Emerson never blamed them, though he 
had a philosopher's interest in the wisdom he might 
have gathered from their talk. Erom the more substan- 
tial neighbors, upright New Englanders of the old type, 
he won not only respect but pleasant companionship. 
Concord of those days, however, could offer friend- 
ships of a more unusual type ; it was rich in personalities 
of extreme interest. One of these was Henry Thoreau. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

For two } ears lie lived most democratically as a general 
helper in Emerson^s household; at another time he 
made his home in a cabin in Walden woods. So devoted 
was he to his revered friend that it is said he came to 
speak in the same remarkable voice. There is little in 
the Journal that betokens more genuine pleasure than 
the pages which record the woodland expeditions Emer- 
son took with this eccentric naturalist. ''The ri verged 
has taken the form of my valiant Henry Thoreau here, 
and introduced me to the riches of his shadowy, starlit, 
moonlit stream, a lovely new world lying as close and 
yet as unknown to this vulgar trite one, as death to life, 
or poetry to prose. Through one field we went to the 
boat, and then left all time, all science, all history behind 
us and entered into nature with one stroke of a paddle/' 
Another interesting neighbor was Bronson Alcott, the 
visionary philosopher and author of the Dry hie Sayings. 
With him Emerson enjoyed a finer intellectual com- 
panionship than with anyone except Carlyle. Alcott and 
Thoreau, he said, were the only ones besides himself, 
who really knew the law of Compensation; but Alcotfs 
mind lacked conversation so that no one would ever 
know its riches as he did. Another ardent thinker 
whom Emerson counted among his friends was Margaret 
Fuller, the high-souled, adventurous woman whose life 
ended so tragically in 1850. With her intercourse was 
more stormy. She could never accept quietly the 
reticence of Emerson's nature, and accused him of '^al- 
ways seeming to be on stilts." "It is even so," he 
comments, "but having never found any remedy, I am 
very patient with this folly." Hawthorne became a 
neighbor in 1842 when he came to live at the Old Manse. 
He was so shy that though he often walked home with 
Emerson, he could but rarely be persuaded to come into 



xvm INTRODUCTION 

the house. The two never came into close relations, 
though Emerson always honored Hawthorne's noble char- 
acter, and looked forward to the time when they should 
be friends. "I thought I could well wait his time and 
mine for what was so well worth waiting/' he wrote to 
Mrs. Hawthorne when death had put an end to the 
hope. 

The wholesome Concord life with its stimulating com- 
panionships and simple social relations was a fitting 
accompaniment to Emerson's real work. Every day he 
spent hours in his study, ''reading for lustres/' he said ; 
every day also he walked alone, usually in his little 
wood on Walden Pond, giving himself up to meditation 
and the quiet influence of nature. The fruits of his 
thought, first given to the world in lectures, began to 
appear in print in 1841, when Emerson issued his second 
book. Essay, First Series, followed in 1844 by the 
Second Series. The two Series included, among others, 
the five essays in this volume. In the mean time Emer- 
son had been making frequent contributions to the Dial, 
the magazine of high ideals and short life, which was 
started in 1840 under the editorship of Margaret Fuller. 
In 1843 he himself reluctantly assumed the editorship 
and carried the paper its last two years. In 1847 he 
published May Day and Other Poems; in 1849 Nature, 
Addresses and Lectures, and in 1850 Representative 
Men. Without doubt this decade was his most impor- 
tant period of literary activity. Interesting and valuable 
as the four later volumes of essays are, the measure of his 
genius and the strength of his teaching may be found 
in the books mentioned. They were received with en- 
thusiasm. Editions were at once issued in England, 
and reissues were in demand there, and in America as 
well. They passed over to the continent also and were 



INTRODUCTION xix 

translated by enthusiastic admirers. All hailed Emersou 
as the great tliinker who proved that America couid 
produce a genius all her own. 

About the time that Emerson brought out his first 
volume of essays, he became interested in two social 
experiments. One of these was the famous Brook Farm, 
ten or twelve miles from Boston. The men who organ- 
ized this scheme were influenced by the same philosoph- 
ical ideas as Emerson; but they had read also certain 
continental writers on Socialism, particularly Fourier, 
who counseled the division of society into phalanxes that 
should work together for a common living. From 1841 
to 1847 work and life and education went on at Brook 
Farm in a pleasant idyllic course, which was not, how- 
ever, wholly free from financial embarrassment. Some 
phases of the life are familiar through Hawthorne's 
BUthedah Romance, but for others one must turn to 
the personal reminiscences of its members and its visitors. 
The experiment finally died a natural death, and all 
that was left was the memory of a pleasant bit of poetry 
that had lived itself out on New England soil. In the 
mean time the other community had sped an even shorter 
course. This was Fruitlands, where Alcott had gathered 
a little company of men, some from beyond the sea. 
As was to be expected from a man of his character, his 
system of farming was comically impractical, so that his 
experiment was a failure from the start. 

Emerson was a frequent visitor at both communities. 
He had in fact thought seriously of accepting the earnest 
invitation to live at Brook Farm. The character of the 
experimenters and their unselfish aims could not fail 
to excite his respect, but his dislike of anything like 
organized reform and his shrewd common sense kept him 
quietly at home. He tried, it is true, a few socialistic 



XX INTRODUCTION 

experiments on his own account. In one he was soon 
convinced that the maids could eat apart from his 
family without imperiling democratic principles, es- 
pecially when they sensibly preferred to. In another 
he found that he could not work his own garden, and 
afterward read or write with any degree of success. So 
he settled back into his usual mode of life, satisfied 
with comfortable conventionality; but he could view 
with sympathetic amusement the more extensive ex- 
periments going on at the two farms. His visits found 
vent in humorous entries in his Journal. "The fault 
of Alcott's community," he 'wrote, "is that it has only 
room for one;" and of Brook Farm he recorded, "One 
man ploughed all day, and one looked out of the window 
all day and drew his picture, and both received the 
same wages." 

If Emerson had a large measure of respect for these 
experimenters, he had much less in common with the 
crowds of erratic reformers M^ho brought their wild 
schemes to the famous man of Concord in hopes of his 
becoming a convert. He received the fanatics with a 
fine and patient courtesy, though their importunity 
made distracting breaks in his time; but they had no 
other satisfaction from their visits. 

There was one class of strangers, however, to whom 
he always extended a free and cordial welcome. In a 
letter to Miss Peabody he wrote, "My special parish is 
young men inquiring their way in life." Even in his 
last working days, when prudence counseled conservation 
of his powers, to all the young pilgrims drawn from 
far and near to Concord he gave a welcome and a chance 
to prove whether they were in truth men. One of them 
characterizes Emerson's attitude toward young men as 
''wonderfully flattering; it was a manner I know no 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

name for but expectancy; as if the world problem was 
now to be solved and we were the beardless (Edipuses 
for whom he had been faithfully waiting." Another 
says, "Almost before we were alone he had made me 
forget in whose presence I stood. ... He addressed me 
as if I were wholly impersonal, a sort of invisible aud- 
ience, ... He always talked slowly, and his words had 
the trick of impressing themselves which belongs to happy 
selection; but it was mostly because his speech was so 
wise and sincere and came from the depths of his heart, 
that it has sunken so deep into mine." He was ever 
lured on, as he wrote Carlyle, "with the hope of saying 
something which shall stick by the good boys." But to 
two principles he firmly adhered in this intercourse. 
He always spoke in the tone and style that was his own 
with no false allowance for youth; those for whom it 
was meant could understand it, he held. And he never 
encouraged disciples; it was his supreme duty to tell 
people what line of thought he was following in his 
search for wisdom, and to report as faithfully as he 
could the truths revealed to him, but every youth must 
search for himself and be not an Emersonian but an 
individual. 

Only once in his life did Emerson come forward and 
offer himself as a direct leader of men's thought. That 
was in the great abolition struggle. From this at first 
he held himself aloof, partly out of dislike for the 
methods that were used and partly because he could 
always see both sides of a question. He long counseled 
settlement of the difficulty by the purchase of the slaves 
at whatsoever cost or sacrifice. This he would follow 
by the slow process of education and general enlighten- 
ment. But in 1850 his Journal begins to show that a 
different phase of the question was rousing him ; "These 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

taunts upon sentimentalism, and higher law, and the 
like, which our Senators use, are the screens of their 
■cowardice." It was as a champion, then, against the 
moral cowardice of truckling to the demands of property 
that he finally came forward into the struggle. From 
then on to the close of the war he had for every crisis 
a fitting word, fair and liberal, but unbending for the 
right as he saw it. When the Harvard boys came back 
from war, he spoke the Commemoration address for 
those who were left behind. It was fitting that he 
should, for as Lowell said, "To him more than to all 
other causes did they owe the sustaining strength of their 
thoughtful heroism." It was his last patriotic address 
in connection with the great struggle. 

In 1867 Emerson published in the Atlantic Monthly 
his Terminus, in which he expressed his conviction: 

*'It is time to be old. 

The port, well worth the cruise, is near." 

Others had not recognized that fact concerning him, 
but he knew. He completed tasks after that, but most 
of them were more in the nature of gathering together 
what he had already done than of fresh composition. 
In 1870-71 he gave two courses of lectures in philosophy 
at Harvard, in which he hoped to carry out a plan that 
had entered his head in 1837, — to put in permanent, 
consistent form his teaching that the laws of the soul 
parallel the laws of external nature. But the task was 
heyond his waning powers. In 1872 the burning of his 
home and a low fever that assailed him from the incident 
exposure, still further worked upon his strength. Friends 
sent him abroad, while they restored the house in minute 
detail. But his real work was over. What addresses 
he gave after that were possible only through the as- 



INTRODUCTION XXIU 

sistance of his friend Mr. Cabot and his daughter Ellen, 
who supplied the lapses in his failing memory. This 
failure took the form of an inability to recall words, 
usually of common meaning, an inability he was wont 
to cover by quaint, roundabout expressions. "Isn't 
there too much heaven on you there ?" he asked a friend 
whom he thought uncomfortable in the blazing sun. He 
still read, still talked with those in whose presence he 
was free, and to the last cherished the thought of friends 
whose names he could no longer remember. "That is 
that man, my man,'^ he said of a picture of Carlyle on 
his study wall. His old age even to its last tranquil 
breath belongs to the well-nigh perfect integrity of his 
life. 

II. EMEESON'S TEACHI^^TG. 

In his essays Emerson is a teacher. He offers great 
moral lessons about what life is and how men should live 
it, but he does this by suggestion rather than by direct 
advice, and he does not offer a system of thought. In- 
stead he makes statements of separate truths. Often 
these stand in very disconnected relations, sometimes 
one statement is quite inconsistent with another; but a 
close study of a considerable body of his work, even of 
the essays of this book, is sufficient to show that these 
scattered precepts have reall}^ a basis of logic and may 
all be unified by a thorough understanding of a few 
leading ideas. 

In the first place Emerson was an idealist. This 
means he held that the spirit is real. Some people find 
it difficult to understand this point of view, for they 
believe that only what the eye can see and the hand can 
touch is real. Emerson's idealism is kept in touch with 
this everyday feeling by a peculiar strain of practicality. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

"iSTature is ideal to me so long as I cannot try the 
accuracy of my own senses." "The advantage of the 
ideal theory is that it presents the world in precisely 
the view most desirable to the mind." "It animates me 
to create my own world through the purification of my 
soul." That last sentence, if looked at closely, offers an 
insight into his belief. If within a man's own mind is 
a spirit that can work upon him until the whole world is 
transformed for him, then that spirit must be real, and 
the world subordinated to it. 

On this theory that the spirit is real has been built 
up a system of thought that is very old. It is not easy 
to understand, for like all philosophical systems it 
deals with very abstract and very lofty ideas. But one 
must gain some knowledge of it to comprehend the full 
force of Emerson's teaching, which springs from this 
system of thought. The two basic principles of the 
system, as Emerson himself explains them in several 
places, are Identity and Variety. I. Identity, or Unity, 
means that the whole universe is one because it is an 
expression of one Spirit. This Spirit Emerson usually 
calls Eeason, or Intuition. II. Variety, or Motion, 
signifies the changing forms through which this supreme 
Reason manifests itself, {a.) The flow of Eeason 
through the minds of men is one phase of this mani- 
festation. (5.) The great laws and principles that under- 
lie all nature is another. Visible nature, that is 
everything outside of man's mind, thus becomes a mere 
symbol, or outer expression, of those laws; or in other 
words, it is a s5^mbol of imiversal Eeason. 

On this underlying unity of man and nature idealists 
built up the idea that the great physical laws which rule 
in the outer world are paralleled by moral laws which 
rule in the minds and lives of men. Thev believed, for 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

instance, that the law of Fluidity, or constant motion 
in nature, was a symbol of the constant energy of Rea- 
son in man's mind; that the law of Evolution was a 
symbol of an upward tendency in the moral world ; and 
that the law of Polarity, which balances or neutralizes 
opposite forces in nature, taught that every act or 
thought of man would bring to pass its own due reward 
or penalty. 

In the second place Emerson is an individualist. His 
individualism is an outgrowth of his idealism, for he 
holds that every person, being different from every 
other, is fitted to receive and respond to the flow of 
Reason in his mind, so as to do a work in the world that 
no other human being can. The individualist has 
therefore a supreme duty to be free from all overpower- 
ing influences from without and listen only to his own 
Reason. Great men of the past were those who had 
most clearly fulfilled this duty. It was very important 
that it should be fulfilled because Reason could act only 
upon the individual and never upon the masses except 
through him. He, then, was responsible for improve- 
ment in societ}^ In this whole doctrine Emerson is 
truly American, for his individualism received emphasis 
from his nationalit}^ and formed the strong point in all 
the teaching he directed to his countrymen. 

In the third place Emerson is an optimist. This is 
the great prevailing note of his philosophy, as it was the 
great winning element in his character. He saw in 
nature the law of compensation working the perfect 
justice of the Spirit, and this he read as a symbol of 
the same perfect justice in the lives of men. Reason 
always triumphs, he said. He saw also in nature the 
law of evolution working itself out, lower forms ever 
giving place to higher and tending upward to man. In 



XXVI INTRODUCTION 

this he saw a symbol of the evolution possible in the 
mind of each individual. Sometime would come the age 
of the perfect man, he said. This doctrine was very 
American, closely related to the comparatively pure 
atmosphere of life in the New World and to America's 
chance for a great future; through it Emerson im- 
pressed his own high, far-reaching aims upon his nation. 

As was intimated at the start, the system of thought, 
here given in its barest outline, has its roots far back 
in the past. Its fundamental ideas of Identity and 
Variety are traceable to the old Greek schools of phil- 
osophy, but the systematizing of it was due largely to 
Plato. He gave too an abiding literary expression to 
the idealists' great teaching that the only real life is the 
life of the spirit, and must concern itself with thought 
and character. The neo-Platonists and Christian mystics 
emphasized the mystical union of Eeason in man with 
the universal Eeason; and modern philosophers in the 
light of modern science have worked out many interesting 
phases of the idealistic theories. To be more explicit as 
to the exact sources of special idealistic theories is not 
necessary here. The point to be kept in mind is that 
this accumulated body of thought was brought into great 
prominence a little before Emerson was born and in 
his early years by a number of philosophers and poets. 
Among them, because of their great influence on the 
course of literature, may be mentioned Coleridge and 
Goethe. 

This noble heritage was not Emerson's alone. The 
early nineteenth century writers who had voiced the 
idealistic tendency had mostly finished their work before 
he began his, but they had handed the thought on to 
new workers. It had undergone changes in this transi- 
tion. The great passion for a sudden perfecting of the 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

human race which had animated many at the time of 
the French Revolution had faded naturally in the 
march of historical events, and a quieter view of life 
had taken its place. One must take things as they were 
and make the best of them. But if society could not be 
instantaneously changed, much was to be gained by 
rousing the individual to live the life of the spirit. 
Carlyle, who began his literary work in 1824, was of this 
later school. He spoke the necessity of a healthy, sturdy, 
sane individual, a man of elemental force, who could 
pierce with his shrewd eye the shams of life and live in 
reality. If life looked dark, let him not question too 
much what it all meant, but find some useful work and 
do it. Euskin, beginning in 1843, defended the same 
fundamental principles though in a different way, for 
he had the more actire instinct of a reformer to fight 
against existing circumstances. He weighed, however, 
the finer things of life, — art, science, pity, and useful- 
ness to others, — against all the material advantages in 
the world. Among the idealistic poets Browning was 
one of the foremost advocates of the life of the spirit. 
His subtly drawn portraits picture the souls of men 
and women. Some are pure and radiant like little 
Pippa's, shedding a redeeming light on all around; 
others are scenes of struggles between good and evil; 
but the lesson is always the prevailing power of Love. 
The great novelists of the time also were filled with the 
same spirit. Their noblest characters are those who for- 
get themselves and live simply or grandly for others. 
Social ties and advantages sink before the power of the 
soul, and the '^Tiappy ending" of the old stories gives 
way to the triumph of character. 

The system of thought of which we have been speak- 
ing had a development in America that was modified, 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

naturally, by the conditions existing there. Two of its 
manifestations deserve especial mention from the rela- 
tions they bear to Emerson's teaching. One was Trans- 
cendentalism. This was not a sudden outburst, for 
idealistic ideas had long been working in New England 
thought ; but at the time when Emerson's lectures began 
to attract wide attention these ideas suddenly took a 
public form. The movement is always associated with 
Emerson's name, for the teachings of which it was an 
expression were in the main identical with his. The 
Transcendentalists were eager, high-souled natures, often 
so carried away by their ardor as to be fanatical against 
what they considered the senseless conventions and base 
aims of society. Many of them were not primarily 
philosophers; rather they were social reformers, for 
they had imbibed socialistic ideas along with their 
idealism and were bent therefore on driving materialism 
out of society by organized attacks. They divided into 
sects as numerous as they were enthusiastic, each with 
its own favorite scheme for improving conditions, and 
for years they made Xew England the scene of ardent 
reform. Mention has already been made of the slight 
community of interest between Emerson and this active 
tj^pe of Transcendentalists. From the very nature of 
his teaching he was held aloof from them ; his individ- 
ualism made organized reform of any kind distasteful, 
and his optimistic belief in the slow triumph of right 
in society bade him look toward a less direct method of 
attack. 

The second manifestation showed how strange a form 
idealism might take when developed on i^merican soil. 
Walt T^Hiitman's first issue of Leaves of Grass appeared 
in 1855. and from then on until his death in 1893 he 
was a leading figure in American literature. His teach- 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

ings were fundamentally Emerson's, — idealism, individ- 
ualism, and optimism, — but he carried them to the 
extreme of robustness, unconventionality, and democracy. 
There was no lack of emphasis upon the reality of 
the life of the spirit, but side by side with that was a 
sturdy insistence on the reality of the life of the body 
and a fierce joy in the pleasures of physical being. Noth- 
ing could be more opposed to Emerson's ideals than 
some of the tendencies and implications of Whitman's 
peoms, but they sprang from the same root. 

In the light of all the foregoing facts the question 
naturally rises what did Emerson add to the system of 
ideas which had been the common belief of so many 
workers? He laid no claim to originality of material; 
indeed he did not think such originality possible. "If 
one require," he said in speaking of Shakespeare, '^^the 
originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their 
own web from their bodies, no great men are original. 
Every master has found his material collected, and his 
power lay in his sympathy with his people and in his love 
of the materials he wrought in. What an economy of 
power !" Even this kind of originality, however, 
Emerson cannot wholly disclaim. To be sure, he was 
not the first to conceive the idea of the parallel between 
the physical and the spiritual laws, and he acknowledges 
fully the great help he gained in its development 
from the mystical, yet scientific works of Emanuel 
Swedenborg; but he showed very early an adoption of 
its principles in his own life, and his essays gave it a 
detailed exposition and helpful application. Moreover, 
by new combinations of the old ideas, he arrived at 
original conclusions, as for instance in the relation 
between the individual and the ultimate regeneration of 
the race. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

But his final claim to greatness rests in himself more 
than in the substance of his teaching. He made a vast 
body of thoughts his own, welding them in the quiet 
processes of his mind into a faith rather than a system 
of thought; he adds thus to his words the irresistible 
power of his character. The very lessons he brought 
also took color from the mind through which they 
were passed. His optimism, for instance, was in great 
measure the product of his character. He was singularly 
free from human imperfections; someone has said of 
him that he scarcely knew the nature of temptation. 
He more than most men, therefore, could ignore the 
problems of evil, could rise above it and call it Nothing. 
He has been criticised for his optimism, and the criticism 
perhaps is just, if his teaching be taken as directed to 
society. But he always addressed the individual, and 
his disregard of evil enabled him to make his appeal 
positive and hopeful. It is at least an open question if 
this was not an element of strength in his teaching. It 
was certainly an element of originality. Finally he had 
an almost unique faculty of fitting his method to his 
purpose. He saw the universe as a symbol of its great 
Cause, and pondered upon the laws that run through 
mind and matter alike; but he could see as well the 
world full of men and women with daily problems to 
face. His task was to bring the truths he saw to the 
help of that world. The task was complicated be- 
cause he was teaching individuals that they must not 
rely merely on teaching, but that every soul must ar- 
rive at its own truths. He met the situation by a body 
of thought that mingles the ideal and the practical 
in a way peculiarly his own, and that succeeds as 
but few teachings have succeeded in giving spiritual 
stimulus without imposing bonds. His work was based 



INTRODUCTION XXXl 

on a system of thought, but it forces no system on others. 

One other element must be dwelt upon in gaining an 
understanding of what his words stand for; that is his 
relation to his country. It is not easy to give briefly 
the social, religious, and political condition of America 
as Emerson saw it in the early nineteenth century, but 
perhaps it may be described with sufficient exactness in 
the two words, dependence and materialism. He saw 
a nation cut loose from the demands that long years of 
Old World traditions had laid upon it, and able thus to 
offer an unparalleled chance of development to its 
individuals. Yet it had built up for itself a new tra- 
dition, quite as binding as the old, a tradition of defer- 
ence to public opinion and the past. The people as a 
whole were bent chiefly on acquiring wealth; statesmen 
yielded to the demands of property; religious teachers 
were preaching a past creed instead of a present faith; 
and writers, teachers, and artists were building up in 
the New World a European culture. America was not 
a broad, forward-looking country with hopes and big 
plans for the future, but a mere creature of the past and 
of petty incentives. It is against this America that 
Emerson took his stand. He offered it aspirations, in- 
dependence, and aims reaching be3^ond the present. It 
was a new ideal of freedom that he brought, — real wor- 
ship, rights for women, pure methods in politics and 
trade, a truly American art and literature, a broad 
educational policy, everything that could exalt the in- 
dividual and give him the power of carrying out his 
higher will. 

His teachings made their way slowly. His highest 
idealism could act, of course, only on the few; yet its 
influence must not be underestimated on that account. 
Gradually, however, the practical elements sifted them- 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

selves out of what was incomprehensible to the multi- 
tude, and worked themselves into the life and thought 
of his country. It is a tribute to Emerson rather than 
a depreciation of his work that many a common opinion 
of today can be traced to him or to the iS^ew England 
idealism of which he was the center. 

III. HOW TO STUDY THE ESSAYS. 

In studying an essay of Emerson the aim should be 
to arrive at as complete a comprehension as possible of 
what the essay teaches, and to relate its thought to the 
body of teaching to which it belongs. A casual reading 
is of less help in the study of Emerson than is the case 
with most authors, though such a reading should be 
given. It must be followed, however, by a close study of 
the author's method and style and of his meaning in 
detail. Special questions on these points are offered on 
the following pages. They are, of course, only sugges- 
tions and must be varied to suit the class. Especially in 
the case of style and method should they be amplified. 
The peculiarities of Emerson's style have been the center 
of much criticism. They were in large measure the 
result of his desire to be suggestive and stimulating 
rather than authoritative. His method of composition 
followed out this theory. The thoughts that came to him 
were clothed in fitting sentence form and recorded in 
his Journal. When he composed a lecture, he grouped 
these recorded thoughts about some leading or central 
idea and gave them to the public, enriched with concrete 
illustrations. The essays were made from passages 
selected from the lectures, but the illustrations were 
mostly dropped and the language was condensed to only 
the most essential words. The result was essays of very 
peculiar structure. The thought is built up in sentences 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

rather than in sentence or paragraph groups. This 
leads to many breaks, either real or apparent, which 
must be bridged from the reader's own thoughts. The 
lack of connection occurs between paragraphs, and be- 
tween sentences in the paragraph as well. In some 
cases the sense runs easily from sentence to sentence 
until the break is reached; then the line of thought 
diverges into a new channel. The old thought is not 
always resumed. Often the break occurs because an 
idea is developed by the statement of facts assumed as 
true, where one might expect an explanation. The whole 
effect of the style is suggestive ; it forces upon the reader 
the necessity of grasping a sentence completely, that is, 
of gaining from it what it contains and what it implies ; 
every word must be studied. 

When the reader has grasped the meaning of an essay 
in detail, he has gained in large measure its moral les- 
sons. But the practice Emerson followed of showing 
first one phase and then another of his teaching, leaving 
the reader to balance contradictions and strike the 
medium of truth, creates often an impression of vague- 
ness regarding the meaning of the essay as a whole. To 
supply the thread of logic the mind is unconsciously 
seeking, many methods are open. The suggestions and 
questions given for each essay separately on pages xxxvi 
to xxxix may prove helpful. 

For the essay on Manners, (I) questions on method 
and style, (II) suggestions for the discussion of special 
passages, and (III) suggestions for the study of the 
teachings as a whole, are offered in the following pages. 
For the other essays, only suggestions for the study of 
the essay as a whole are given, but material suggestive 
as well as explanatory on special passages will be found 
in the Notes at the end of the volume. 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

MANNERS 

I. Questions on Method and Style 

Page 2, line 27. Note the break between this and the preced- 
ing paragraph. Supply the process of thought that would unite 
the two. Find other examples of broken transition between 
paragraphs. 

2, 1. 31. "The word gentleman" etc. Can the break between 
this sentence and the preceding be supplied? 

3, 1. 13. What is the relation of this sentence to what precedes 
and what follows? 

5, 1. 10. The figure of speech here is suggestive rather than 
explanatory. What does it suggest? 

6, 1. 30. What does this figure of speech suggest? Note 
whether other figures in the essay are explanatory or illustrative. 

7, 1. 14. In this paragraph select sentences that are mere 
statements where proof might be expected. Find other examples 
of the same method of development. 

8, 1. 18. Supply the statement omitted between this and the 
sentence in the preceding line. 

10, 1. 32. " A man," etc. What is the relation of this sen- 
tence to what precedes and what follows? 

11, 1. 28. "A gentleman," etc. Note the relation of this 
sentence to its context. 

15, 1. 18. "Conventional." Notice that the emphasis is laid 
on the derivation of the word. Are there other uses of this 
device? 

19, 1. 4. Contrast by reading aloud the rhythm of this para- 
graph with one from Webster or Hawthorne. 

II. Suggestions for the Discussion of Special Passages 

Page 3, line 25. "Quantities" is used in a pecuUar sense. 
Define it. 

5, 1. 8. "Memory" is here equivalent to established pre- 
cedents which go down before a dominating personality. What 
quaUty of the gentleman is emphasized in this paragraph? Is 
it generally accepted as a quality of good manners? Why does 
Emerson emphasize it? 

6, 1. 22. Is this the method by which manners are actually 
revivified? The second part of the paragraph reminds one of the 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

relations between Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson. See Macaulay's 
Life of Johnson and Boswell's Johnson. 

7, 1. 14. Does Emerson mean the " class of power " are 
gentlemen? Or the "polished circles"? Does this contradict 
the paragraph on page four in any sense? 

8, 1. 10. "The city," etc. What is the significance of this 
and the following sentences in the paragraph? 

8, 1. 17. Note how this paragraph emphasizes the fact that 
society, in the narrower sense of the word, is a natural product, 
and cannot therefore be set aside or forced. 

9, 1. 20. In what sense can this sentence and the following be 
accepted as true? Does the latter part of the paragraph tally 
with experience? 

9, 1. 29. Does society hate pretenders? Explain the next 
sentence. What is the leading idea of the paragraph? How are 
the last three sentences related to it? Is the paragraph con- 
sistent with jyage 15, lines 12-20. Can the two ideas be recon- 
ciled? 

11, 1. 12. Who are the "lesser gods"? The "loftier deities"? 
Is the last sentence in this paragraph idealistic or practical? 

11, 1. 22. In this paragraph note the emphasis again on the 
individual. Is physical, mental, or moral worth implied here 
as the basic idea of the gentleman? Note the quiet humor 
implied in " too great or too little." 

13, 1. 21. In what sense is "deference" explained by the 
paragraph. The aloofness described here is one very character- 
istic phase of Emerson's insistence on individuality. What 
sentence in the paragraph is the key to the secret of this attitude? 

15, 1. 32. What purpose does the qualifying nature of this 
paragraph serve in the general account of good manners? Note 
the moral turn given to the idea at the close. This is transitional 
to the next paragraph, which again leads into the following. 

17, 1. 25. How are the two ideas in this sentence opposed in 
thought? Fashion is symbolic of what? Evolved from what 
ideal? What disparity is there between Emerson's ideal of 
society and real society as pictured later in the paragraph? How 
does he reconcile them? 

19, 1. 4. Explain sentences two and three of this paragraph 
in their relation to the context. What is the underlying thought 
here? Is it only ideal? (Incidents such as took place when the 
Tit.'inic went down must not be overlooked in answering this.) 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

21, 11. 19-23. Find illustrations in Scott and Shakespeare to 
test the point made. 

22, 1. 3. "I have seen an individual" etc., is a favorite method 
with Emerson of sketching an ideal. It is not always certain 
he had not someone in mind. This ideal person in Journal and 
essays alike he often calls Osman. See page 25, line 18. 

22, 1. 15. Note the opinion on woman's rights. By the term 
"musical nature" he signifies a natural fitness or sense of har- 
mony that makes one receptive to the leading of Intuition. 

Emerson was especially fortunate in his women friends. The 
first type of woman described may well be taken to reflect the 
personalities of Margaret Fuller, his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, 
and Sarah Ripley. In the second type there is a reminder of 
Ellen Tucker Emerson and of Elizabeth Hoar, whom he always 
called his sister as she was the betrothed wife of his brother 
Charles. 

24, 1. 11. This sentence is idealistic: Things are what our 
minds hold them to be; fashionable society melts to nothing, 
when the brave and the good say, " It is nothing unless it.be 
good and useful." 

24, 1. 15. Note the humor and the irony at the close of this 
paragraph, 

26, 1. 16. What does he stigmatize in the term " national 
caution"? 

25, 1. 30. Does this paragraph settle upon any scheme for 
reorganizing imperfect society? 

III. Suggestions for the Study of the Essay as a Whole 

The general thought in the essay on Manners takes two lines, — 
statements on society as ar^ whole and statements on the gentle- 
man. As Emerson presents, as usual, the ideal side by side with 
the actual, the whole essay may be grouped under four headings. 
A collection of some of the specific statements of the essay 
under these four groups will supply a partial tabulation that 
can be extended by the pupil. 

A. The ideal of society. 

1. Society is a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity 

of the best. 

2. It makes its own whatever personal beauty or extra- 

ordinary native endowment anywhere appears. 



^INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

B. Actual society: 

1. It is the average result of the character and faculties 

universally found in man. 

2. It is the spontaneous fruit of that class who have most 

vigor. 

C. The ideal gentleman: 

1. The word is a homage to personal and incommunicable 

properties. 

2. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, 

expressing that lordship in his behavior; and the 
possessor of good nature and benevolence. 

D. The gentleman as he sometimes exists: 

1. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated 

with the name. 

2. All sorts of gentlemen knock at the door. 

The statements under each head will tend to group them- 
selves around rather definite ideas, as for instance'in A.: 
a. The formation and constitution of society; 
h. The relation of the man of force to society; 

c. The qualities that gain entrance to society; 

d. The true reason for the existence of society, and the advan- 

tages of a social code; 

e. Society as a symbol of high spiritual facts. 

Such questions as the following may serve to bring out the 
leading teachings more clearly. 

1. Is Emerson too optimistic in his picture of actual 
society? 

2. Does he intimate anywhere that he would forcibly abolish 
the faults of society? Does he hope for a slow reformation of 
society? Account for these facts. Discuss the bearing of the 
last paragraph upon them. 

3. How do the statements under D of the outline emphasize 
his positive, optimistic method of teaching. 

4. How many of the qualities assigned to the ideal gentleman 
may be traced back to Emerson's ideal of the individual? 

5. Show in the whole characterization of the ideal gentleman 
that emphasis is laid on the moral sentiment (i. e. character as 
opposed to virtues), and hatred of moral cowardice. What to 
Emerson constitutes moral cowardice? 

6. What remedy is offered to a person who feels aggrieved 



xxxviii IN TROD UCTION 

at his position in society or at his exclusion from it? How is 
this ideahstic? 

7. What part do irony and humor play in the essay? 

8. How does the essay stand related to the teaching of 
idealism? of evolution? 

9. Discuss the optimism of the essay as a whole. 

10. Show how Emerson's idea of the origin, constitution, and 
growth of society lays the responsibility for faults in it upon the 
individual. Is this ideal or practical? Why is it consistent with 
his whole philosophy? 

SELF-RELIANCE 

The general teaching of this essay may be grouped around 
the following heads : 

A. The ideal as it is set: 

la. The self-rehant nation; 

16. The lack of self-reliance as it reacts upon the nation; 

2a. The ideal of the self-reliant soul; 

26. Hindrances to self-reliance in the individual. 

B. Means of attaining the ideal: 

\ 1. The relations between the self-reliant soul and universal 

Reason; 
2. The importance of the self-reliant soul as an agent of 
moral courage. 
Suggestive questions: 1 . To what nation is the appeal directed? 
2. Why is lack of self-reliance moral cowardice? 3. How does 
the principle of Identity give unity to the whole essay? 4. Why 
does the last paragraph deserve to be called " the final trumpet 
call to faith"? 

COMPENSATION 

The ethical value of this essay and its relation to Emerson's 
whole teaching may be brought out clearly by grouping its ideas 
after the following outline. 

The working of the law of compensation. 

A. In nature; 

B. 1. On the wicked; 
2. On the good. 

Suggestive questions: 1. What is crime in Emerson's view? 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

2. Can the inconsistency underlying the two divisions of B be 
reconciled? 3. What bearing has Emerson's optimism on this 
essay? 4. What is the unity of this essay? 

NATURE 

The statements drawn from the portion on Efficient Nature 
might well be collected and grouped under the following general 
principles. In no essay in the book do we come closer to Emer- 
son's own statement of his faith. 

Parallels drawn between spiritual and physical laws: 

A. Evolution or development; 

a. In external nature, 

b. In man. 

B. Exaggeration; 

a. In external nature. 
h. In man. 

C. Compensation; 

a. In nature, 

b. In man. 

FRIENDSHIP 

There seems little necessity of analyzing this essay, as it has 
but one leading line of thought. 

Suggestive questions: 1. What in detail are the ideal relation- 
ships of two individuals in a friendship? (Use " individual " in 
Emerson's meaning.) 2. Is there anything in his picture of friend- 
ship that undermines his constant insistence on a soul absolutely 
true to its own nature? 3. What type of man is capable of 
friendship in this large sense? 4. How does the doctrine of 
Identity underlie the thought of this essay? 5. What part do 
the emotions play in friendship as Emerson describes it? Is this 
wise or unwise? 6. Do Emerson's words of the advantage to the 
individual compensate for the aloofness this ideal involves? 
Defend your answer, 7. Emerson's idea of evolution in the 
physical world meant slow development or perfection. What 
bearing has the moral parallel of this law on his ideas of the ideal 
friendship? 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



(For a more complete bibliography see George W. Cooke's 
A Bibliography of Ralph W. Emerson, Boston and New York, 
1908. There are bibliographical notes in the books by A. Ireland, 
R. Garnett, and M. Conway listed below.) 

I. Helpful material for an historical background in the study 
of Emerson will be found in convenient compass in: — Barrett 
Wendell, A Literary History of America, Book II., Chapter 5, 
and Book V., Chapters 1, 4 and 5. John Nichol, American 
Literature, Edinburgh, 1882, Chapters 8 and 9. C. E. Richard- 
son, American Literature from 1607 to 1885, Chapters 8 and 9. 
W. P. Trent, A History of American Literature, 1905, Chapter 6, 
to which is appended a bibliography of the Transcendental 
movement, etc. 

II. Texts: The two standard editions of Emerson's works 
are: — The Riverside Edition, 12 volumes, and The Centenary 
Edition, 12 volumes. 

The latter is annotated in an interesting, personal way by 
Edward Waldo Emerson. 

III. Biography: Autobiographical material will be found in: 
Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1909, Edited by 
Edward Waldo Emerson and W. E. Forbes. Correspondence of 
Carlyle and Emerson, Boston, 1886, 2 volumes, Edited by C. E. 
Norton. Correspondence of Emerson and John Sterling, Boston, 
1897, Edited by Edward Waldo Emerson. Correspondence 
between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Grimm, Boston, 1903. 
Edited by F. W. HoUs. 

Five early and valuable lives of Emerson are: — J. E. Cabot, 
A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1887, 2 volumes. 
G. W. Cooke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Life, Writings, and 
Philosophy, Boston, 1881. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, Boston, 1885. (American Men of Letters Series.) 
Alexander Ireland, In Memoriam — Ralph Wcddo Emerson, 

xl 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xli 

London, 1882. This is of interest from its connection with 
Emerson's lecture tour in England. Richard Garnett, Life of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, London, 1888. (Great Writers Series.) 

Several books mentioned under I. have good biographical 
material. 

Biographical material by relatives: — Edward Waldo Emerson, 
Emerson in Concord, Boston, 18S9. This is of especial personal 
interest. Daniel Greene Haskins, Ralph Waldo Emerson, his 
Maternal Ancestors, Boston, 1887. This throws an interesting 
light on late colonial days in Boston, the personality of Madam 
Emerson, and Emerson's early childhood. 

Other excellent biographies: — G. W. Woodberry, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, New York, 1907. (English Men of Letters Series.) 
W. M. Payne, "Ralph Waldo Emerson" in Leading American 
Essayists, New York, 1910. This is very clear and concise. 
John Morley, "Emerson" in Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I, London, 
1898. The life is short, and the appended criticism is brief but 
suggestive. 

Books containing personal reminiscences of great interest 
with more or less direct biographical material and criticism: — 
Moncure D. Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, Boston, 
1882. F. B. Sanborn, The Genius and Character of Emerson, 
Boston, 1885. This is a collection of lectures on Emerson given 
at the Concord School of Philosophy. Two of especial interest 
are by Miss E. P. Peabody and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. C. J. 
W^oodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson, London, 1890. 
John Albee, Remembrances of Emerson, New York, 1901. James 
Russell Lowell, "Emerson the Lecturer" in My Study Windows, 
Boston, 1871. A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
Philosopher and Seer, Boston, 1888. George William Curtis, 
"Emerson" in Literary and Social Essays, Nev/ York, 1894. 
This is also found in Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the 
Homes of American Authors. It contains a graphic account of 
Emerson's home, and some of the friends gathered there. E. P. 
Whipple, Recollections of Eminent Men, 1886, pp. 119-154. 
Herman Grimm, "Ralph Waldo Emerson" in Essays on Liter- 
ature, translated by S. H. Adams, Boston, 1888. 

IV. Criticism: The following estimates of the character, 
philosophy and writings of Emerson are cited as showing a wide 
variety of opinion: — John J. Chapman, Emerson and Other 
Essays, New York, 1898. James Russell Lowell, Fable for Critics. 



Xlii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

E. P. Whipple "Emerson as Poet" in American Literature and 
Other Papers, Boston, 1899. W. C. Brownell "Emerson" in 
American Prose Masters, New York, 1909. Matthew Arnold, 
"Emerson" in Discourses on America, New York, 1906. Leslie 
Stephen, "Emerson" in Studies of a Biographer, Vol. 4, New 
York, 1898. Henry James, "Emerson" in Partial Portraits, 
London, 1888. P. E. More, "Emerson" in Shelburne Essays, 
First Series, New York, 1907. 

V. Magazine Articles: Such varied treatment of Emerson 
is given in permanent book form that there is little need of turn- 
ing to files of periodicals. Two interesting and helpful articles 
are: — Emerson, by Henry James, Sr. Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 
1904 (Vol. 94); and Emerson as Seer, by C. W. Eliot, Atlantic, 
June, 1903 (Vol. 91). 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



xliii 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



Emerson. 


Contemporary 


History and 


Literature, 


Biography. 


1803. Emerson born. 


1805. Scott, Lay of 


1803. Louisiana 
Treaty. 

1804. Bonaparte 
made Emperor; 
Plawthorne born. 




the Last Minstrel. 


1807, Longfellow, 
Whittier born. 




1808. Scott, Mar- 






mion. 






1809. Irving, History 


1809. Lincoln, 




of New York. 


Holmes, Poe, Ten- 
nyson, Darwin, 
Gladstone born. 


1811. Death of Emer- 






son's father. 








1812. Bvron, Childe 


1812-14. War with 




Harold, Cantos I, II, 


England. 


1813. Boston Latin 






School. 






1814. Family in Con- 


1814. Wordsworth, 




cord. 


The Excursion. 






1815. Miss Austen, 


1815. Battle of 




Emma. 


Waterloo. 


1817. Entered Har- 


1817. Bryant, Than- 




vard. 


atopsis. 






1819. Irving, Sketch 


1819. Lowell, Ruskin 




Book. 


born. 




1820. Scott, Ivanhoe; 


1820-21. Missouri 




Shelley, Prome- 


Compromise. 




t h e u s Unbound; 






Keats, Lamia and 






other Poems. 




1821. Graduated 


1821. Cooper, The 


1821. Greek revolt. 


from college. 


Spy. 




1821-25. A teacher. 


1822. De Quincey, 

Coiifessions. 




1823. Goodhy, Proud 


1823. Lamb, Essays 


1823. P r o cl a m a - 


World, written. 


of Elia. 


tion of the Monroe 
Doctrine, Shelley 
died. 


1825. Entered Har- 


1825. Carlyle, Life of 


1824. Byron died. 


vard Divinity 


Schiller; Macaulay, 




School. 


Essay on Milton. 




1826. Illness; appro- 


1826. L n g f e 1 - 




bated to preach; 


low, first poems. 




first public sermon 






at Waltham. 






1826-27. In the South. 




1827 Webster elect- 
ed U. S. senator. 



xiiv CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABl.'E— Continued. 



Emerson. 



1829. Ordained Assis- 
tant Pastor of Sec- 
ond Church, Bos- 
ton; succeeded to 
pastorate; married 
Ellen Tucker. 



Contemporary 
Literature. 



1830. Tennyson 
Poems. 



1831. Death of Ellen 1831. Poe, Poems. 
Tucker Emerson. I 

1832. Resignation of| 
his charge; voyage 
to Europe. 



1833. Italy, France, 
England, and Scot- 
land; return home. 

1834. Four lectures in 
Boston; life in the 
Old Manse; Nature, 
written; death of 
Edward Emerson; 
eorrespon dence 
with Carlyle begun. 

1835. Marriage t o 
Lydian Jackson ; 
lectures on Biogra- 
phy and English 
Literature, Boston. 

1836. Death of 
Charles Emerson; 
twelve lectures in 
Boston; iVa^wre pii fo- 
il shed; Sartor Re- 
sartus edited. 

1837. The American 
Scholar; first ad- 
dress on Slavery. 

1838. Divinity Col- 
lege address; Mich- 
ad Angela. 

1839. Milton. 

1840. "T h e Dial," 
Vol. L, five prose 
pieces and three 
poems. 



1833. Carlyle, Sartor 
Resartus; Brown- 
ing, Pauline. 

1834. Bancroft, Col- 
onization of the U.S., 
Vol. I. 



1836, Dickens, Pick- 
wick Papers: Lan- 
dor, Pericles and As- 
pasia. 



1837. Prescott, Fer- 
dinand and Isabella; 
Hawthorne, Twice- 
Told Tales. 



History and 
Biography. 



1829. Catholic 
Emancipation in 
England. 



1830. Accession 
of William IV. in 
England; revolu- 
tion in France. 

1832. Ordinance o f 
Nullification 
in South Carolina; 
Reform Bill in Eng- 
land; Scott died. 

1833. A n t i - Slavery 
Society formed. 



1834. Coleridge 
Lamb died. 



and 



1837. Accession 
of Queen Victoria. 



1839. Chartist riots 
in England. 

1840. P e n n y p o s t 
established in Eng- 
land. 



CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE 
CHRONOLOGICAL TA^^LE— Continued. 



xlv 



Emerson. 



1841. Death of eldest 
child; address on 
Nature; "The 
Dial," Vol. II., four 
contribu tions 
Essays, First 

1843. Editor of "The 
Dial." 



1844. Eleven contri- 
butions to "The 
Dial"; Essays, 
Second Series. 

1845. Seven lectures 
on "Representative 
Men," Boston. 



1847. May Day and 
Other Poems; lec- 
ture course in Man- 
chester, England. 

1848. Lecture courses 
in England and 
Scotland; visit to 
Paris. 



Contemporary 

LlTER.\TURE. 



1841. Carlyle, Heroes 
and Hero-Worship. 



1843. Webster, Bunk- 
er Hill Speech; 
Ruskin, Modern 

Painters, Vol. I. 



History and 
Biography. 



1841. Brook 
experiment. 



Farm 



1845. 

ven. 



Poe, The Ra- 



1849. Nature, Ad- 
dresses and Lectures. 

1850. First lectures 
west of the Mis- 
sissippi ; Represen- 
tative Men. 

1851. Address on the 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

1852. Memoirs of 
Margaret Fuller (in 
collaboration). 



1855. Lectures on 
Slavery, Boston ; 
Address at the Wo- 
man's Rights Con- 
vention, Boston. 



1847. Thackeray 
Vanity Fair. 



1848. Lowell, Bigelow 
Papers; Macaulay, 
History of England, 
Fols, I, 11. Mill, 
Principles of Politi- 
cal Economy. 



1850. Hawthorne, 
The Scarlet Letter; 
Kingsley, Alton ^ 

Locke. 



1852. Mrs. Stowe, 
Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

1853. Matthew 
Arnold, Poems. 

1855. Spencer, Prin- 
ciples of Psychology; 
Whitman, Leaves 
of Grass. 



1844. Morse tele- 
graph. 



1846-48. Mexican 
War; 1846. Repeal 
of the English Corn 
Laws. 



1848. Gold discover- 
ed in California; 
revolution in 
France. 



1849. Poe died. 

1850. Fugitive Slave 
Act ; Webster's 
speech on the ques- 
tion ; Wordsworth 
died. 



1852. Clay, Webster 
died; Napoleon III. 
proclaimed Emper- 
or. 
1854-56. Crimean 
War. 



Xlvi CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE— Conhnwed. 



Emerson. 



1856. Speeches on the 
Assault on Mr. 
Sumner and on 
Kansas Relie f; 
English Traits, 
Samuel Hoar. 

1857. The Chartist's 
Complaint. 

1858. Address at 
Middlesex Agricul- 
tural Fair. 

1859. Burns Centen- 
ary speech. 



1860. Speeches on 
John Brown; Con- 
duct of Life. 

1860-70. Saturday 
Club. 

1861. American 
Civilization. 



1865. Memorial ad- 
dress on Lincoln ; 
Harvard Com- 
me moration 
Speech; Thoreau's 
Letters edited; Liv- 
ing Age. 

1866. Character. 

1867. Progress of Cul- 
ture, Phi Beta 
Kappa address; 
LL. D. from Har- 
vard; Overseer of 
Harvard; Terminus; 
May-Day and other 
pieces. 



Contemporary 
Literature. 



1858. Holmes, Auto-' 
crat; Tennyson,; 
Idylls of the King. | 

1859. Darwin, Origin 
of Species; Dickens, 
7'ale of Two Cities; 
Fitz Gerald, Ruhdi- 
ydt; Meredith, Ordeal 
of Richard Feverel. 



1861. George Eliot, 

Silas M arn er ; 

Reade, Cloister and 

the Hearth. 
1863. Longfellow, 

Tales of a Wayside 

Inn. 



1864. Newman, Apo- 
logia pro sua Vita. 

1865. Lowell, Com- 
memoration Ode; 
Ruskin, Sesame and 
Lilies. 



1866. Whittier, Snow 
Bound. 



History and 
Biography. 



1857. D red Scott 
decision. 

1858. Lincoln- 
Douglas debate. 



1859. John 
Raid. 



Brown's 



1868. Alcott, 
Women. 



Little 



1860. War of Italian 
liberties. 



1861. Lincoln elected 
president; Civil 
War begun. 

1863. Emancipa- 
tion Proclama- 
tion ; Battle of Get- 
tysburg; Thackeray 
died. 

1864. Hawthorne died. 

1865. Close of Civil 
War; Assassination 
of Lincoln. 



18(;6. Reform 
England. 



Bill 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE— Continued. 



xlvii 



Emerson. 


Contemporary 


History and 


Literature. 


BlOGRAIHY. 




1869. Browning, The 


1869. Opening of the 




Ring and the Book. 


Suez Canal. 




Clemens, Innocents 






Abroad; Blackmore, 






Lorna Doone. 




1870. Course in Phil- 


1870. Huxley, Lay 


1870. Franco -Prus- 


osophy at Harvard; 


Sermons and Ad- 


sian War. 


Society and Soli- 


dresses. 




tude. 






1871. Repetition 


1871. Lowell, My 




of lecture course at 


Study Windows. 




Harvard ; trip to 






California. 






1872. Last of the an- 






nual lecture courses 






in Boston ; t rip to 






Europe. 


1873. Arnold, Litera- 
ture and Dogma. 




1874. Parnassus, a n 


1874. Mill, Auto- 




anthology of Eng- 


biography. 




lish poems. 






1875. Nominated 






Lord Rector of Glas- 






gow University. 






1876. Oration at the 


1876. George Eliot, 


1876. The Centen- 


University of Vir- 


Daniel Deronda. 


nial. 


ginia; Select Poems; 






Letters and Social 






Aims. 


1877. Morris, Sigurd 
the Volsung; Lanier, 
Poems. 




1878. Fortune of the 


1878. Henry James, 


1878. Bryant died. 


Republic; The Sover- 


Daisy Miller; 




eignty of Ethics. 


Howells, Lady of the 
Aroostook. 




1879. Founding 


1879. Meredith, The 




of the Concord 


Egoist. 




School of Phil- 






osophy; The 






Preacher. 




1880. Interna- 
tional Peace As- 
sociation founded. 


1881. Address on 




1881. Carlyle died. 


Carlyle. 






1882. Superlatives; 


1 


1882. Longfellow 


death. 


1 


died. 



MANNERS 

*'How near to good is what is fair! 
Which we no sooner see, 
But with the lines and outward air 
Our senses taken be." 

'* Again yourselves compose, 
And now put all the aptness on 
Of Figure, that Proportion 

Or Color can disclose ; 
That if those silent arts were lost, 
Design and Picture, they might boast 

From you a newer ground. 
Instructed by the heightening sense 
Of dignity and reverence 

In their true motions found. ' ' 

Ben Jonson. 

Half the world, it is said, knows not how the other 
half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee 
islanders getting their dinner off human bones ; and they 
are said to eat their own wives and children. The hus- 
bandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of 5 
old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up their 
housekeeping nothing is requisite but two or three 
earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat which is 
the bed. The house, namely a tomb, is ready without 
rent or taxes. No rain can pass through the roof, and 10 
there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is 
nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they 
walk out and enter another, as there are several hun- 



2 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

dreds at their command. "It is somewhat singular," adds 
Belzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to talk of hap- 
piness among people who live in sepulchres, among the 
corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they know 
5 nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo the rock-Tib- 
boos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the 
language of these negroes is compared by their neighbors 
to the shrieking of bats and to the whistling of birds. 
Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals 

10 are called after their height, thickness, or other acci- 
dental quality, and have nicknames merely. But the 
salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these 
horrible regions are visited, find their way into countries 
where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked 

15 in one race with these cannibals and man-stealers ; coun- 
tries where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, 
glass, gum, cotton, silk and wool; honors himself with 
architecture ; writes laws, and contrives to execute his will 
through the hands of many nations; and, especially, 

20 establishes a select society, running through all the 
countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aris- 
tocracy, or fraternity of the best, which, without written 
law or exact usage of any kind, perpetuates itself, colo- 
nizes every new-planted island, and adopts and makes its 

25 own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary native 
endowment anywhere appears. 

AVhat fact more conspicuous in modern history than the 
creation of the gentleman ? Chivalry is that, and loyalty 
is that, and in English literature half the drama, and all 

30 the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, 
paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the 
word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present 
and the few preceding centuries by the importance at- 
tached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable 



MANNERS 3 

properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got 
associated witli the name, but the steady interest of man- 
kind in it must be attributed to the valuable properties 
which it designates. An element which unites all the 
most forcible jjersons of every country, makes them in- 5 
telligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat 
so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack the 
masonic sign, — cannot be any casual product, but must 
be an average result of the character and faculties uni- 
versally found in men. It seems a certain permanent 10 
average ; as the atmosphere is a permanent composition, 
whilst so many gases are combined only to be decom- 
pounded. Comme il faut, is the Frenchman's description 
of good society : as we must he. It is a spontaneous 
fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who 15 
have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this 
hour, and though far from pure, far from constituting 
the gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as 
good as the whole society permits it to be. It is made of 
the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a com- 20 
pound result into which every great force enters as an 
ingredient, namely virtue, wit, beauty, wealth and power. 
There is something equivocal in all the words in use to 
express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, 
because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is 25 
assumed by the senses as the cause. The word gentleman 
has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. 
Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we 
must keep alive in the vernacular the distinction between 
fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning. 30 
and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. 
The usual words, however, must be respected : they will 
be found to contain the root of the matter. The point 
of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy. 



4 ^ EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

chivalry, fashion, and the like, is that the flower and 
fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is 
beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth. The 
result is now in question, although our words intimate 
5 well enough the popular feeling that the appearance sup- 
poses a substance. The gentleman is a man of truth, 
lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in 
his behavior; not in any manner dependent and servile, 
either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond 

10 this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good- 
nature or benevolence : manhood first, and then gentle- 
ness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of 
ease and fortune ; but that is a natural result of personal 
force and love, that they should possess and dispense the 

15 goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent 
person must fall in with many opportunities to approve 
his stoutness and worth ; therefore every man's name that 
emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages rattles in 
our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force 

20 never goes out of fashion. That is still paramount to- 
day, and in the moving crowd of good society the men of 
valor and reality are known and rise to their natural 
place. The competition is transferred from war to 
politics and trade, but the personal force appears readily 

25 enough in these new arenas. 

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in 

' trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than 
talkers and clerks. God knows that all sorts of gentle- 
men knock at the door ; but whenever used in strictness 

30 and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point 
at original energy. It describes a man standing in his 
own right and working after untaught methods. In a 
good lord there must first be a good animal, at least to 
the extent of yielding the incomparable advantage of 



MANNERS 5 

animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, but 
they must liave these, giving in every company the sense 
of power, which makes things easy to be done which daunt 
the wise. The society of the energetic class, in tlieir 
friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage and of 5 
attempts which intimidate the pale scholar. The courage 
which girls exhibit is like a battle of Lundy's Lane, or a 
sea-fight. The intellect relies on memory to make some 
supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons. But 
memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in 10 
the presence of these sudden masters. The rulers of 
society must be up to the work of the world, and equal to 
their versatile office : men of the right Caesarian pattern, 
who have great range of affinity. I am far from believ- 
ing the timid maxim of Lord Falkland ("that for 15 
ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow 
will go through the cunningest forms^'), and am of 
opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose 
forms are not to be broken through ; and only that plente- 
ous nature is rightful master which is the complement of 20 
whatever person it converses with. My gentleman gives 
the law where he is ; he will outpray saints in chapel, out- 
general veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy 
in the hall. He is good company for pirates and good 
with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself 25 
against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, 
and I could as easily exclude myself, as him. The famous 
gentlemen of x\sia and Europe have been of this strong 
type; Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Cassar, Scipio, 
Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They 30 
sat very carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent 
themselves, to value any condition at a high rate. 

A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the 
popular judgment, to the completion of this man of the 



6 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

world; and it is a material deputy which walks through 
the dance which the first has led. Money is not essential, 
but this wide affinity is, wliich transcends the habits of 
clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all 
5 classes. If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable 
circles and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader 
in fashion ; and if the man of the people cannot speak on 
equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman 
shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, 

10 he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and Epami- 
nondas, are gentlemen of the best blood who have chosen 
the condition of poverty when that of wealth was equally 
open to them. I use these old names, but the men I 
speak of are my contemporaries. Fortune will not sup- 

15 ply to every generation one of these well-appointed 
knights, but every collection of men furnishes some 
example of the class; and the politics of this country, 
and the trade of every town, are controlled by these 
hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to 

20 take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in 

fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular. 

The manners of this class are observed and caught 

with devotion by men of taste. The association of these 

masters with each other and with men intelligent of 

25 their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The 
good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are re- 
peated and adopted. By swift consent everything super- 
fluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine 
manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated 

30 man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and 
intimidate ; but once matched by the skill of the other 
party, they drop the point of the sword, — points and 
fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more 
transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less trouble- 



MANNERS 7 

some game, and not a misunderstanding rises between 
the plajers. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of 
impediments and bring the man pure to energize. They 
aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids travel- 
ling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the 5 
road and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure 
space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine 
sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed that 
it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus 
grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most 10 
puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most 
feared and followed, and which morals and violence 
assault in vain. 

There exists a strict relation between the class of 
power and the exclusive and polished circles. The last 15 
are always filled or filling from the first. The strong 
men usually give some allowance even to the petulances 
of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. N'apol^pn, 
child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, 
never ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain; 20 
doubtless with the feeling that fashion is a homage to 
men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, 
represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed : it 
is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress 
the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of 25 
the Past. It usually sets its face against the great of this 
hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls ; they are 
absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing. 
Fashion is made up of their children; of those who 
through the value and virtue of somebody, have acquired 30 
lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of 
cultivation and generosity, and in their physical organi- 
zation a certain health and excellence which secure to 
them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power to 



8 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

enjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cor- 
tez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity 
and permanent celebration of such as they ; that fashion 
is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo and Trafalgar 
5 beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run 
back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty 
years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the 
reapers, and tJieir sons, in the ordinary course of things, 
must yield the possession of the harvest to new com- 

lOpetitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city 
is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is 
said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. 
The city would have died out, rotted and exploded, long 
ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only 

15 country which came to town day before yesterday that is 
city and court to-day. 

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. 
These mutual selections are indestructible. If they pro- 
voke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded 

20 majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority 
by the strong hand and kill them, at once a new class 
finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a 
bowl of milk : and if the people should destroy class after 
class, until two men only were left, one of these would be 

25 the leader and would be involuntarily served and copied 

"* ' by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight 
and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of 
the estates of the realm. I am the more struck with this 
tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the adminis- 

30 tration of such unimportant matters, that we should not 
look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet 
men under some strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a 
literary, a religious movement, and feel that the moral 
sentiment rules man and nature. We think all other dis- 



MANNERS 9 

tinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of 
caste or fasliion for example; yet come from year to 
year and see how permanent that is, in this Boston or 
New York life of man, where too it has not the least 
countenance from the law of the land. Not in Egypt or 5 
in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are as- 
sociations whose ties go over and under and through it, 
a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college class, 
a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a re- 
ligious convention; — the persons seem to draw insep-10 
arably near ; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its mem- 
bers will not in the year meet again. Each returns to his 
degree in the scale of good societ}-, porcelain remains 
porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion 
may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the 15 
nature of this union and selection can be neither frivo- 
lous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect 
graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure 
or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of 
society. Its doors unbar instantaneously to a natural 20 
claim of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his 
way in, and will keep the oldest patrician out who has 
lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; 
good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever coun- 
try readily fraternize with those of every other. The 25 
chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in 
London and Paris by the purity of their tournure. 

To say what good of fashion we can, it rests on reality, 
and hates nothing so much as pretenders ; to exclude and 
mystify pretenders and send them into everlasting 30 
""Coventry,^ is its delight. We contemn in turn every 
other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in 
little and the least matters of not appealing to any but 
our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of 



10 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance., so 
it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not oc- 
casionally adopt and give it the freedom of its saloons. 
A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes 
5 unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will 
Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him 
thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy 
with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not 
wish to dance in waltzes and cotillons. For there is 

10 nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior 
yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at 
her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes 
that there is a ritual according to which every act and 
compliment must be performed, or the failing party 

15 must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn that 
good sense and character make their own forms every 
moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, 
stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the 
floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new 

20 and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in 
fas-hion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion 
demands is composure and self -content. A circle of men 
perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible per- 
sons in which every man's native manners and character 

25 appeared. If the fashionist have not this quality, he 
is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance that we 
excuse in a man many sins if he will show us a complete 
satisfaction in his position, Mdiich asks no leave to be, of 
mine or any man's good opinion. But any deference to 

30 some eminent man or woman of the world, forfeits all 
privilege of nobilit}^ He is an underling : I have noth- 
ing to do with him ; I will speak with liis master. A man 
should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or 
society with him, — not bodily, the whole circle of his 



MANNERS 11 

friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a 
new company the same attitude of mind and reality of 
relation which his daily associates draw him to, else he is 
shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the 
merriest club. "If you could see Yich Ian Volir with 5 
his tail on ! — " But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry 
his belongings in some fashion, if not added as honor, 
then severed as disgrace. 

There will always be in society certain persons wlio are 
mercuries of its approbation, and wdiose glance will at 10 
any time determine for the curious their standing in the 
world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. 
Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the 
loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege. They 
are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formid-l5 
able without their own merits. But do not measure the 
importance of this class by their pretension, or imagine 
that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. 
They pass also at their just rate ; for how can they other- 
wise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's office 20 
for the sifting of character ? 

As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so 
that appears in all the forms of society. We pointedly, 
and by name, introduce the parties to each other. Know 
you before all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, 25 
and this is Gregory; — they look each other in the eye; 
fhey grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize 
each other. It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman 
never dodges : his eyes look straight forward, and he as- 
sures the other party, first of all, that he has been met. 30 
For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hos- 
pitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures and decora- 
tions? Or do we not insatiably ask. Was a man in the 
house? I may easily go into a great household where 



12 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

there is much substance, excellent provision for comfort, 
luxury and taste, and yet not encounter there any 
Amphitryon who shall subordinate these appendages. 
I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that 
5 he is the man I have come to see, and fronts me accord- 
ingly. It was therefore a very natural point of old feudal 
etiquette that a gentleman who received a visit, though 
it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but 
should wait his arrival at the door of his house. No 

10 house, though it were the Tuileries or the Escurial, is 
good for anything without a master. And yet we are not 
often gratified by this hospitality. Everybody we know 
surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conser- 
vatory, gardens, equipage and all manner of toys, as 

15 screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does 
it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, 
and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front 
to front with his fellow ? It were unmerciful, I know, 
quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of 

20 eminent convenience, whether the guest is too great or 
too little. We call together many friends who keep each 
other in play, or by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the 
young people, and guard our retirement. Or if per- 
chance a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose 

25 eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to our 
curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the 
Lord God in the garden. Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's 
legate at Paris, defended himself from the glances of 
Napoleon by an immense pair of green spectacles. Na- 

SOpoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally 
them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great 
enough, with eight hundred thousand troops at his back, 
to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but fenced himself with 
etiquette and within triple barriers of reserve ; and, as all 



MANNERS 13 

the world knows from Madame de Stael, was wont, when 
he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all 
expression. But emperors and rich men are by no means 
tne most skilful masters ol good manners. No rent-roll 
nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulation; 5 
and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as 
really all the forms of good-breeding point that way. 

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, 
Montaigne's account of his journey into Italy, and am 
struck with nothing more agreeably than the self-respect- 10 
ing fashions of the time. His arrival in each place, the 
arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some 
consequence. Wherever he goes he pays a visit to what- 
ever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, 
as a duty to himself and to civilization. When he leaves 15 
any house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he 
causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a perpet- 
ual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen. 

The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that 
of all the points of good-breeding I most require and in- 20 
sist upon, is deference. I like that every chair should 
be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tendency to 
stateliness to an excess of fellowship. Let the incom- 
municable objects of nature and the metaphysical isola- 
tion of man teach us independence. Let us not be too 25 
much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house 
through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, 
that be might not want the hint of tranquillity and self- 
poise. We should meet each morning as from foreign 
countries, and, spending the day together, should depart 30 
at night, as into foreign countries. In all things I would 
have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as 
the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. 
No degree of affection need invade this religion. This is 



14 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers 
should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too 
much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It is easy 
to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but cool- 
5 ness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. 
A gentleman makes no noise : a lady is serene. Propor- 
tionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a stu- 
dious house with blast and running, to secure some paltry 
convenience. Xot less I dislike a low sympathy of each 

10 with his neighbor's needs. Must we have a good under- 
standing with one another's palates? as foolish people 
who have lived long together know when each wants salt 
or sugar. I pray my companion, if ]ie wishes for breaQ, 
to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or 

15 arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate 
as if I knew already. Every natural function can be 
dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry 
to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our 
breeding should recall, however remotely, the grandeur 

20 of our destiny. 

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide hand- 
ling, but if we dare to open another leaf and explore 
what parts go to its conformation, we shall find also an 
intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the brain as 

25 well as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion. 
Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine percep- 
tions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of 
beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient 
to good-breeding, a union of kindness and independence. 

30 We imperatively require a perception of, and a homage 
to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in re- 
quest in the field and workyard, but a certain degree of 
taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could 
better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the 



MANNERS 15 

laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral 
qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses 
are despotic. The same discrimination of ht and fair 
runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of life. The 
average spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting 5 
under certain limitations and to certain ends. It enter- 
tains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects 
everything which tends to unite men. It deliglits in 
measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of 
measure or proportion. The person who screams, or lO 
uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts 
whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, 
love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious 
usefulness if you will hide the want of measure. This 
perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of 15 
the social instrument. Society will pardon much to 
genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a con- 
vention, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to 
coming together. That makes the good and bad of 
manners, namely what helps or hinders fellowship. For 20 
fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative ; not good 
sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It 
hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quar- 
relsome, egotistical, solitary and gloomy people ; hates ^ 
whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; 25 
w^hilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree 
refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And 
besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, 
the direct splendor of intellectual powder is ever welcome 
in fine society as the costliest addition to its r-ule and its 30 
credit. 

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but 
it must be tempered and shaded, or that will also of- 
fend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick per- 



16 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ceptions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. One 
may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave the 
omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into 
the palace of beauty. Society loves Creole natures and 
5 sleepy languishing manners, so that they cover sense, 
grace and good-will: the air of drowsy strength, which 
disarms criticism; perhaps because such a person seems 
to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not 
spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which loes 

10 not see the annoyances, shifts and inconveniences that 
cloud the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. 

Therefore besides personal force and so much percep- 
tion as constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its 
patrician class another element already intimated, which 

15 it significantly terms good-nature, — expressing all de- 
grees of generosity, from the lowest willingness and 
faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity and 
love. Insight we must have, or we shall run against 
one another and miss the way to our food; but intellect 

20 is selfish and barren. The secret of success in society is 
a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not 
happy in the company cannot find any word in his mem- 
ory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a 
little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in 

25 every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for 
the introduction of that which he has to say. The favor- 
ities of society, and what it calls ivhole souls, are able 
men and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncom- 
fortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the 

30 company; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a 
funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shooting- 
match. England, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, 
in the beginning of the present century, a good model of 
that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who 



MANNERS 17 

added to his great abilities the most social disposition and 
real love of men. Parliamentary history has few better 
passages than the debate in which Burke and Fox sepa- 
rated in the House of Commons ; when Fox urged on his 
old friend the claims of old friendship with such tender- 5 
ness that the house was moved to tears. Another anec- 
dote is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the 
story. A tradesman Avho had long dunned him for a note 
of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting 
gold, and demanded payment. "No," said Fox, "I owe 10 
this money to Sheridan ; it is a debt of honor ; if an acci- 
dent should happen to me, he has nothing to show." 
"Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt into a debt 
of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the 
man for his confidence and paid him, saying, "his debt 15 
was of older standing, and Sheridan must wait." Lover 
of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African 
slave, he possessed a great personal popularity ; and Na- 
poleon said of him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, 
in 1805, "Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an 20 
assembly at the Tuileries." 

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of cour- 
tesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as its foundation. 
The painted phantasm Fashion rises to cast a species of 
derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven 25 
from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, 
nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. 
We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we 
must affirm this. Life owes much of its spirit to these 
sharp contrasts. Fashion, which affects to be honor, is 30 
often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom code. 
Yet so long as it is the highest circle in the imagination 
of the best heads on the planet, there is something nec- 
essary and excellent in it: for it is not to be supposed 



18 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

that men have agreed to be the dupes of anything pre- 
posterous ; and the respect which these mysteries inspire 
in the most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity 
with which details of high life are read, betray the uni- 
6 versality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that 
a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the 
acknowledged 'first circles' and apply these terrific stand- 
ards of justice, beauty and benefit to the individuals 
actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, sages and 

10 lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes 
and many rules of probation and admission, and not the 
best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, 
which genius pretends, — the individual demonstrating 
his natural aristocracy best of the best; — but less 

15 claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves lions, 
and points like Circe to her horned company. This 
gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark ; and 
that is my Lord Eide, who came yesterday from Bagdat ; 
here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain; and Cap- 

20 tain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; and Mon- 
sieur Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon ; 
Mr. Hobnail, the reformer ; and Eeverend Jul Bat, who 
has converted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school ; 
and Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius 

25 by pouring into it the Bay of N"aples ; Spahi, the Persian 
ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled nabob of 
Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon. — But these are 
monsters of one day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to 
their holes and dens; for in these rooms every chair is 

30 waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in general, the 
clerisy, win their way up into these places and get 
represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. 
Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending 
a year and a day in St. Michael's Square, being steeped 



MANNERS 19 

in Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and intro- 
duced, and properly grounded in all the biography and 
politics and anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

Yet these fineries may lia\e grace and wit. Let there 
be grotesque sculpture about the gates and oifices of 5 
temples. Let the creed and connnandments even have 
the saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness 
universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. 
What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used 
as means of selfishness ? What if the false gentleman al- 10 
most bows the true out of the world ? What if the false 
gentleman contrives so to address his companion as 
civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and also 
to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose 
its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and 15 
sentimental; nor is it to be concealed that living blood 
and passion of kindness does at last distinguish God's 
gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin 
Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age : 
"Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend and 20 
persuaded his enemy : what his mouth ate, his hands paid 
for : what his servants robbed, he restored : he never 
forgot his children ; and whoso touched his finger, drew 
after it his whole body." Even the line of heroes is 
not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable 25 
person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who 
jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some 
absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter 
of runaway slaves; some friend of Poland; some Phil- 
hellene; some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the 30 
second and third generation, and orchards when he is 
grown old; some well-concealed piety: some just man 
happy in an ill fame ; some youth ashamed of the favors 
of fortune and impatiently casting them on other 



20 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

shoulders. And these are the centres of society, on which 
it returns for fresh impuls-es. These are the creators of 
Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of be- 
havior. The beautiful and the generous are, in the 
5 theory, the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, 
and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, 
and every pure and valiant heart who worshipped Beauty 
by word and by deed. The persons who constitute the 
natural aristocracy are not found in the actual aristoc- 

10 racy, or only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the 
spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the 
spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, 
who do not know their sovereign when he appears. The 
theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty 

15 of these. It divines afar off their coming. It says with 
the elder gods, — 

As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; 

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth 
20 In form and shape compact and beautiful; . . . 

So ©n our heels a fresh perfection treads, 

A power more strong in beauty, born of us 

And fated to excel us, as we pass 

In glory that old Darkness .... 
25 ... For 't is the eternal law 

That first in beauty shall be first in might. 

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society 
there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of 
its light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always 
30 a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and 
imperial court; t]ie parliament of love and chivalry. 
And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic 
dispositions are native; with the love of beauty, the 



MANNEH>S 21 

delight in society, and the power to embellish the passing 
day. If the individuals who compose the purest circles of 
aristocracy in Europe, tlie guarded blood of centuries, 
should pass in review, in such manner as that we could at 
leisure and critically inspect their behavior, we might find 5 
no gentleman and no lady ; for although excellent speci- 
mens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in 
the assemblage, in the particulars we should detect of- 
fence. Because elegance comes of no breeding, but of 
birth. There must be romance of character, or the most 10 
fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It 
must be genius which takes that direction: it must be 
not courteous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in 
fiction as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the fidelity 
with which he painted the demeanor and conversation of 15 
the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens, nobles 
and great ladies, had some right to complain of the ab- 
surdity that had been put in their mouths before the days 
of Waverley ; but neither does Scott^s dialogue bear criti- 
cism. His lords brave each other in smart epigrammatic 20 
speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not 
please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. 
In Shakespeare alone the speakers do not strut and 
bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so 
many titles that of being the best-bred man in England 25 
and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are 
permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the 
presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their 
nature, but whose character emanates freely in their 
word and gesture. A beautiful form is better than a 30 
beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a 
beautiful form : it gives a higher pleasure than statues or 
pictures ; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but 
a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, 



22 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

hj the moral quality radiating from his countenance he 
may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his 
manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an 
individual whose manners, though wholly within the 
6 conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, 
but were original and commanding and held out pro- 
tection and prosperity ; one who did not need the aid of 
a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who 
exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new 

10 modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of eti- 
quette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and 
free as Eobin Hood ; yet with tlie port of an emperor, if 
need be, — calm, serious and fit to stand the gaze of 
millions. 

15 The open air and the fields, the street and public 
chambers are the places where Man executes his will ; let 
him yield or divide the sceptre at the door of the house. 
Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects 
in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in 

20 short, any want of that large, flowing and magnanimous 
deportment which is indispensable as an exterior in the 
hall. Our American institutions have been friendly to 
her, and at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this 
country, that it excels in women. A certain awkward 

25 consciousness of inferiority in the men may give rise to 
the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's Eights. Certainly 
let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social 
forms as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I con- 
fide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that 

30 1 believe only herself can show us how she shall be served. 
The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at 
times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the 
pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia; and by the firm- 
ness with which she treads lier upward path, she con- 



MANNERS 23 

vinces the coarsest calculators that another road exists 
than that which tlieir feet know. But besides tliose who 
make good in our imagination the place of muses and 
of Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase 
with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs 5 
over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us 
with courtesy; who unloose our tongues and we speak; 
who anoint our eyes and we see? We say tilings we 
never thought to have said ; for once, our walls of habit- 
ual reserve vanished and left us at large ; we were chil- 10 
dren playing with children in a wide field of flowers. 
Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for 
weeks, and we shall be sunny poets and will write out in 
many-coloTed words the romance that you are. Was it 
Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, She 15 
was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount 
of life, when I saw her day after day radiating, every 
instant, redundant joy and grace on all around her? 
She was a solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous 
persons into one society: like air or water, an element of 20 
such a great range of affinities that it combines readily 
with a thousand substances. Where she is present all 
others will be more than they are wont. She was a unit 
and whole, so that whatsoever she did, became her. She 
had too much sympathy and desire to please, than that 25 
you could say her manners were marked with dignity, 
yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect de- 
meanor on each occasion. She did not study the Per- 
sian grammar, nor the books of the seven poets, but all 
the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her. 30 
For though the bias of her nature was not to thought, 
but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature 
as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her 
heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as 



24 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show 
themselves noble. 

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or 
5 Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those 
who look at the contemporary facts for science or for 
entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators. 
The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle 
to the ambitious youth who have not found their names 

10 enrolled in its Golden Book, and whom it has excluded 
from its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet 
to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and rela- 
tive: it is great by their allowance; its proudest gates 
will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. 

15 For the present distress, however, of those who are pre- 
disposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, 
there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a 
couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly re- 
lieve the most extreme susceptibility. For the advantages 

20 which fashion values are plants which thrive in very 
confined localities, in a few streets namely. Out of this 
precinct they go for nothing ; are of no use in the farm, 
in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial so- 
ciety, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friend- 

25 ship, in the heaven of thought or virtue. 

But we have lingered long enough in these painted 
courts. The worth of the thing signified must vindicate 
our taste for the emblem. Everything that is called 

. fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause 

30 and fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, 
namely the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this 
the fire, which in all countries and contingencies, will 
work after its kind and conquer and expand all that ap- 
proaches it. This gives new meanings to every fact. 



MANNERS 25 

This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but 
its own. What is rich? Are you rich enough to help 
anybody ? to succor the unfashionable and the eccentric ? 
rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the 
itinerant with his consul's paper which commends him 5 
"To the charitable,^^ the swarthy Italian with his few 
broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by 
overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or 
besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble excep- 
tion of your presence and your house from the general 10 
bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they 
were greeted with a voice which made them both remem- 
ber and hope? What is vulgar but to refuse the claim 
on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but 
to allow it, and give their heart and yours one holiday 15 
from the national caution? Without the rich heart, 
wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz could not 
afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt 
at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad and deep 
that although his speech was so bold and free with the 20 
Koran as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never 
a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who 
had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a 
vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once 
to him ; that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable 25 
in the centre of the country, that it seemed as if the in- 
stinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. And the 
madness which he harbored he did not share. Is not this 
to be rich ? this only to be rightly rich ? 

But I shall hear without pain that I play the courtier 30 
very ill, and talk of that which I do not well under- 
stand. It is easy to see that what is called by distinc- 
tion society and fashion has good laws as w^ell as bad, 
has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. 



26 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it re- 
minds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any 
attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one 
day,' said Silenus, ^talking of destroying the earth; he 
5 said it had failed ; they were all rogues and vixens, who 
went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded 
each other. Minerva said she hoped not ; they were only 
ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, 
that they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or 
10 seen near ; if you called them bad, they would appear so ; 
if you called them good, they would appear so ; and there 
was no one person or action among them which would 
not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to know 
whether it was fundamentally bad or good/ 



SELF-RELIANCE 

Ne te qiiaesiveris extra. 

Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
Eender an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune, 



Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 

I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent 
painter which were original and not conventional. Al- 
ways the soul hears an admonition in such lines^ let the 
subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of 
more value than any thought they may contain. To be- 5 
lieve your own thought, to believe that what is true for 
you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is 
genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the 
universal sense ; for always the inmost becomes the out- 
most — and our first thought is rendered back to us by 10 
the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the 
voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we as- 
cribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at 
naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, 
but what they thought. A man should learn to detect 

27 



28 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his 
miud from within, more than the lustre of the firmament 
of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his 
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we 
5 recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to 
us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art 
have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They 
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with 
good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole 

10 cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a 

stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what 

we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be 

forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. 

There is a time in every man's education when he ar- 

15 rives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imi- 
tation is suicide; that he must take himself for better 
for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe 
is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to 
him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground 

20 which is given to him to till. The power which resides 
in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what 
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, 
makes much impression on him, and another none. It is 

25 not without preestablished harmony, this sculpture in 
the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should 
fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely 
let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We 
but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that 

30 divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely 
trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be 
faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work 
made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay 



SELF-RELIANCE 29 

when he has put his heart into his work and done his 
best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give 
him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. 
In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse be- 
friends ; no invention, no hope. 5 

Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
Accept the place the divine providence has found for 
you, the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of 
events. Great men have always done so, and confided 
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying 10 
their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their 
heart, working through their hands, predominating in 
all their being. And we are now men, and must accept 
in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny ; and 
not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a 15 
revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious as- 
pirants to be noble cla}^, under the Almighty effort let 
us advance on Chaos and the Dark. 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the 
face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. 20 
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment 
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and 
means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and 
when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. In- 25 
fancy conforms to nobody ; all conform to it ; so that one 
babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who 
prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and 
puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims 30 
not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think 
the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you 
and me. Hark! in the next room who spoke so clear 
and emphatic? It seems he knows how to speak to his 



30 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

contemporaries. Good Heaven ! it is he ! it is that very 
lump of bashfuhiess and phlegm which for weeks has 
done nothing but eat wlien you were by, and now rolls 
out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows 

5 how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold 
then, he will know how to make us seniors very unneces- 
sary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to 

10 conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. 
How is a boy the master of society; independent, ir- 
responsible, looking out from his corner on such people 
and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their 
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, 

15 interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers 
himself never about consequences, about interests; he 
gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court 
him ; he does not court you. But the man is as it were 
clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has 

20 once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed person, 
w^atched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, 
whose affections must now enter into his account. There 
is no Lethe for this. Ah, tliat he could pass again into 
his neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus lose 

25 all pledge, and, having observed, observe again from the 
same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted in- 
nocence, must always be formidable, must always engage 
the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal 
youth the force would be felt. He would utter opinions 

30 on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private 
but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men 
and put them in fear. 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 
they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 



SELF-RELIANCE 31 

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood 
of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock 
company, in which the members agree, for the better 
securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender 
the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most 5 
request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It 
loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. 
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He 
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered 
by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be good- 10 
ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our 
own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have 
the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which 
when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued ad- 
viser who was wont to importune me with the dear old 15 
doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to 
do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
from within? my friend suggested, — "But these im- 
pulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 
'^They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the 20 
devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No law 
can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and 
bad are but names very readily transferable to that or 
this ; the only right is what is after my constitution ; the 
only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry him- 25 
self in the presence of all opposition as if every thing 
were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to 
think how easily w^e capitulate to badges and names, to 
large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and 
well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than 30 
is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the 
rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the 
coat of philanthropy, shall that pass ? If an angry bigot 
assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to 



32 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not 
say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; 
be good-natured and modest ; have that grace ; and never 
varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this in- 

5 credible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. 
Thy love afar is spite at home." Eough and graceless 
would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the 
affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge 
to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 

10 preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, 
when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother 
and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would 
write on the lintels of the door-post. Whim. I hope it 
is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot 

15 spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show 
cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, 
again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my 
obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are 
they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, 

20 that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to 
such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not 
belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all 
spiritual affinity I am bought and sold ; for them I will 
go to prison if need be ; but your miscellaneous popular 

25 charities ; the education at college of fools ; the building 
of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now 
stand; alms to sots, and the thousandfold Eelief So- 
cieties; — though I confess with shame I sometimes suc- 
cumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which 

30by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold. 

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep- 
tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. 
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of 
courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in 



SELF-RELIANCE 33 

expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their 
works are done as an apology or extenuation of their 
living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a 
high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish 
to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a 5 
life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much 
prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine 
and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. 
I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet 
and bleeding. My life should be unique ; it should be 10 
an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary 
evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal 
from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it 
makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions 
which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay 15 
for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and 
mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need 
for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows 
any secondary testimony. 

What I must do is all that concerns me ; not what the 20 
people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and 
in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction 
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder be- 
cause you will always find those who think they know 
what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy 25 
in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy 
in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is 
he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
sweetness the independence of solitude. 

The objection to conforming to usages that have be- 30 
come dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses 
your time and blurs the impression of your character. 
If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead 
Bible Society, vote with a great party either for the 



34 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Government or against it, spread your table like base 
housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty 
to detect tlie precise man you are. And of course so 
much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do 
6 your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and 
you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what 
a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I 
know your sect I anticipate 3^our argument. I hear a 
preacher announce for his text and.topic the expediency 

10 of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know 
beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spon- 
taneous word ? Do I not know that with all this ostenta- 
tion of examining the grounds of the institution he will 
do no such thing ? Do I not know that he is pledged to 

15 himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, 
not as a man, but as a parish minister ? He is a retained 
attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest 
affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with 
one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves 

20 to some one of these communities of opinion. This con- 
formity makes them not false in a few particulars, 
authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their 
every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real 
two, their four not the real four ; so that every word they 

25 say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set 
them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us 
in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. 
We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire 
by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a 

30 mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail 
to wreak itself also in the general history ; I mean 'the 
foolish face of praise,' the forced smile which we put on 
in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to 
conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, 



SELF-RELIANCE 35 

not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping 
wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, and 
make the most disagreeable sensation ; a sensation of re- 
buke and warning which no brave young man will suffer 
twice. 5 

For non-conformity the world whips you with its dis- 
pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to esti- 
mate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him 
in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this 
aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like 10 
his o^vn he might well go home with a sad countenance ; 
but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet 
faces, have no deep cause — disguise no god, but are put 
on and off as. the wind blows and a nevrspaper directs. 
Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable 15 
than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough 
for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage 
of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and 
prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable 
themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indig-20 
nation of the people is added, when the ignorant and 
the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force 
that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and 
mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to 
treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 25 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word because 
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our 
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint 
them. 30 

But why should 3^ou keep your head over your 
shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of 
your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have 
stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should 



36 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule 
of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely 
even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for 
judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever 
5 in a new day. Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics 
you have denied ]3ersonality to the Deity, yet when the 
devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and 
life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. 
Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the 

10 harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 

15 wall. Out upon your guarded lips ! Sew them up with 
packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what 
you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and 
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words 
again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. 

20 Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be 
misunderstood ! Misunderstood ! It is a right fool's 
word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythag- 
oras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and 

25 every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
great is to be misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, 
as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignifi- 

30 cant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how 
you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic 
or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or 
ncross, it still spoils the same thing. In this pleasing 
contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record 



SELF-RELIANCE 37 

day by day my honest thought without prospect or retro- 
spect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, 
though I mean it not and see it not. My book should 
smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The 
swallow over my window should interweave that thread 5 
of straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass 
for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. 
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice 
only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice 
emit a breath every moment. 10 

Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever 
variet}^ of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmoni- 
ous, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost 
sight of when seen at a little distance; at a little height 15 
of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage 
of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This 
is only microscopic criticism. See the line from a suf- 
ficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and 20 
will explain your other genuine actions. Your conform- 
ity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have al- 
ready done singly will justify you now. Greatness always 
appeals to the future. If I can be great enough now to 
do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right 25 
before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right 
now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. 
The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone 
days of virtue work their health into this. A^^iat makes 
the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, 30 
which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a 
train of great days and victories behind. There they all 
stand and shed an united light on the advancing actor. 
He is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every 



38 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

man's eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chat- 
ham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and 
America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us 
because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. 
5 We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We 
love it and pay it homage because it is not a trap lor our 
love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, 
and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if 
shown in a young person. 

10 I hope in these days we have heard the last of conform- 
ity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridic- 
ulous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, 
let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow 
and apologize never more. A great man is coming to 

15 eat at my house. I do not wish to please him : I wish that 
he should wish to please me. I will stand here for 
humanity; and though I would make it kind, I would 
make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth 
mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and 

20 hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact 
which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great 
responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves 
a man ; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, 
but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. 

25 He measures you and all men and all events. You are 
constrained to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every 
body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some 
other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
else ; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must 

30 be so much that he must make all circumstances indif- 
ferent — put all means into the shade. This all great 
men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, 
and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and 
time fully to accomplish his thought; — and posterity 



SELF-RELIANCE 39 

seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar 
is born, and for ages after we have a Eoman Empire. 
Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave 
to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the 
possible of man. An institution is the lengthened 5 
shadow of one man; as, the Eeformation, of Luther; 
Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, 
of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Eome f 
and all history resolves itself very easily into the biogra- 
phy of a few stout and earnest persons. 10 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under 
his feet. Let him not peep .or steal, or skulk up and 
down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an inter- 
loper in the world which exists for him. But the man in 
the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds 15 
to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble 
god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, 
a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding 
air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 
'Who are you, sir?^ Yet they all are his, suitors for his 20 
notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out 
and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict.; 
it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to 
praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up 
dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke^s house, 25 
washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on 
his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
duke, and assured that he had been insane — owes its 
popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state 
of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and 30 
then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a 
true prince. 

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In his- 
tory our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. 



40 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier 
vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small 
house and common days work : but the things of life are 
the same to both : the sum total of both is the same. Why 
sail this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gus- 
tavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out 
virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act 
to-day as followed their public and renowned steps. 
When private men shall act with original views, the lustre 

10 will be transferred from the actions of kings to those 
of gentlemen. 

The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, 
who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that 

15 is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which 
men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the 
great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his 
own, make his own scale of men and things and reverse 
theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, 

20 and represent the Law in his person, was the hieroglyphic 
by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of 
their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. 
The magnetism which all original action exerts is ex- 
plained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who 

25 is the Trustee ? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a 
universal reliance may be grounded ? What is the nature 
and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, 
without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty 
even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of 

30 independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that 
source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of vir- 
tue, and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity 
or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as In- 
tuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that 



SELF-RELIANCE, 41 

deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, 
all things find their common origin. For the sense of 
being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the 
soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, 
from time, from man, but one with them and proceedeth 5 
obviously from the same source whence their life and 
being also proceedeth. We first share the life by which , 
things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in 
nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here 
is the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. 10 
Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man 
wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be 
denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap 
of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of its 
activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern 15 
justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of our- 
selves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask 
whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that 
causes — all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its 
presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man 20 
discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind and his 
involuntary perceptions. And to his involuntary per- 
ceptions he knows a perfect respect is due. He may err 
in the expression of them, but he knows that these things 
are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. All my 25 
wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the 
most trivial reverie, the faintest native emotion, are 
domestic and divine. Thoughtless people contradict as 
readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or 
rather much more readily ; for they do not distinguish 30 
between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose 
to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsi- 
cal, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it 
after me, and in course of time all mankind, — although 



42 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my 
perception of it is as much a fact as the sum 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must 
5 be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not 
one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his 
voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, 
from the centre of the present thought; and new date 
and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple 

10 and receives a divine wisdom, then- old things pass away, 
— means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and 
absorbs past and future into the present hour. All 
things are ma.de sacred by relation to it, — one thing as 
much as another. All things are dissolved to their 

15 centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty 
and particular miracles disappear. This is and must be. 
If therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and 
carries you backward to the phraseology of some old 
mouldered nation in another country, in another world, 

20 believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which 
is its fulness and completion ? Is the parent better than 
the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries 
are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the 

25 soul. Time and space are but ph3^siological colors which 
the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is 
day; where it was, is night; and history is an imperti- 
nence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheer- 
ful apologue or parable of my being and becoming, 

30 Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright ; 
he dares not say "I think/' "I am," but quotes some saint 
or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the 
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no 
reference to former roses or to better ones ; they are for 



SELF-RELIANCE 43 

what they are ; the}^ exist with God to-day. There is no 
time to them. Tliere is simply the rose ; it is perfect in 
every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has 
burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there 
is no more ; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature 5 
is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. 
There is no time to it. But man postpones or remem- 
bers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted 
eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that sur- 
round him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He 10 
cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature 
in the present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong in- 
tellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak 
the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, 15 
or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a 
few texts, on a few lines. We are like children who 
repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, 
and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and char- 
acter they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact 20 
words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the 
point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, 
they understand them and are willing to let the words 
go; for at any time they can use words as good when 
occasion comes. So was it with ns, so will it be, if we 25 
proceed. If we live trul}^, we shall see truly. It is as 
easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak 
to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall 
gladly disburthen the memory of its hoarded treasures 
as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice 30 
shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the 
rustle of the corn. 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we 



44 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

say is the far off remembering of the intuition. That 
thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, 
is this. Wlien good is near you, when you have life in 
yourself, — it is not by any known or appointed way ; you 

5 shall not discern the foot-prints of any other ; you shall 
not see the face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; — • 
the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange 
and new. It shall exclude all other being. You take 
the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever 

10 existed are its fugitive ministers. There shall be no 
fear in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks 
nothing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We are 
then in vision. There is nothing that can be called grati- 
tude, nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. 

15 It seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a per- 
ceiving that Truth and Eight are. Hence it becomes a 
Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things go well. 
Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South 
Sea ; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no ac- 

20 count. This which I think and feel underlay that 
former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie 
my present and will always all circumstances, and what 
is called life and what is called death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 

25 in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of 
transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of 
the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the 
world hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever de- 
grades the past ; turns all riches to poverty, all reputation 

30 to a shame; confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves 
Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate 
of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there 
will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance 
is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that 



SELF-RELIANCE 45 

wliich relies because it works and is. Who has more soul 
than I masters me, tliough he should not raise his huger. 
Eound him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. 
Who has less I rule with like facility. We fancy it 
rhetoric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not 5 
yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a com- 
pany of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the 
law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, 
kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on 10 
this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever- 
blessed OxE. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the 
reality. All things real are so by so much virtue as they* 
contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, 
eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage 15 
my respect as examples of the soul's presence and impure 
action. I see the same law working in nature for con- 
servation and growth. The poise of a planet, the bended 
tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital re- . 
sources of every animal and vegetable, are also demon- 20 
strations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying 
soul. All histor}^, from its highest to its trivial passages, 
is the various record of this power. 

Thus all concentrates; let us not rove; let us sit at 
home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the in- 25 
truding rabble of men and books and institutions by a 
simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the 
shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let 
our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own 
law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune be- 30 
side our native riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of 
man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to put 
itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it 



46 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of men. 
(^We mu st go alone. Isolation must precede true society. 
I like the silent church before the service begins, better 
than any preaching. How far olf, how cool, how chaste 
5 the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanc- 
tuary. So let us always sit. Wh}' should we assume the 
faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because 
they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same 
blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. 

10 Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even 
to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation 
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be 
'elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in con- 
spiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, 

15 client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at 
once at thy closet door and say, 'Come out unto us.' — Do 
not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; 
stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a mo- 
ment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting 

20 appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their con- 
fusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them 
by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but 
through my act. ''What we love that we have, but by 
desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 

25 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience 
and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us 
enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, 
courage and constanc}^ in our Saxon breasts. This is to 
be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. 

30 Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live 
no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiv- 
ing people with whom we converse. Say to them, 
father, mother, wife, brother, friend, I have 
lived with you after appearances hitherto. Hencefor- 



SELF-RELIANCE 47 

ward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that hence- 
forward I obey no law less tlian the eternal law. 1 will 
have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to 
nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the 
chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must 5 
fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from 
your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself 
any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what 
I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still 
seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. 1 10 
will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that 
what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun 
and moon Avhatever inly rejoices me and the heart ap- 
points. If you are noble, I will love you ; if you are not, 
I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. 15 
If you are true, but not in the same truth witli me, 
cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do 
this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your 
interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have 
dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh 20 
to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your 
nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will 
bring us out safe at last. — But so may you give these 
friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my 
power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have 25 
their moments of reason, when they look out into the 
region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and 
do the same thing. 

The populace think that your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere anti-30 
nomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the name of 
philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of conscious- 
ness abides. There are two confessionials, in one or the 
other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your 



48 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in 
the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your 
relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat 
and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But 1 
5 may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to 
myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. 
It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called 
duties. But if I can discharge its debts it enables me to 
dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that 

10 this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who 

has cast off the common motives of humanity and has 

ventured to trust himself for a task-master. High be his 

heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in 

15 good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a 
simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity 
is to others. 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of these 

20 ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn 
out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. 
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, 
and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and 
perfect persons. We want men and women who shall 

25 renovate life and our social state, but we see that most 
natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, 
have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. 
Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, 

30 our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but 
society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. The 
rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises 
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say 



SELF-RELIANCE 49 

he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our 
colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year 
afterwards, in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New 
York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is 
right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest 5 
of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Ver- 
mont, wdio in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, 
farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a news- 
paper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in 
successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, 10 
is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast 
with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a 
profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives 
already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. 
Let a stoic arise who shall reveal the resources of man 15 
and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and 
must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self- 
trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word 
made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations ; that he 
should be ashamed of our compassion ; and that the mo- 20 
ment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, 
idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him 
no more but thank and revere him; — and that teacher 
shall restore the life of man to splendor and make his 
name dear to all History. 25 

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance — a new 
respect for the divinity in man — must work a revolution 
in all the offices and relations of men ; in their religion ; 
in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of 
living; their association; in their property; in their 30 
speculative views. 

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That 
which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and 
manly, Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign 



50 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses 
itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and 
mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer tliat craves a par- 
ticular commodity — anything less than all good, is 

5 vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life 
from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a 
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pro- 
nouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to 
effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes 

10 dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As 
soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He 
will then see prayer in .all action. The prayer of the 
farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of 
the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 

15 prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. 
Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to 
inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, 

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
Our valors are our best gods. 

20 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Dis- 
content is the want of self-reliance : it is infirmity of will. 
Eegret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; 
if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins 
to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come 

25 to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for 
company, instead of imparting to them truth and health 
in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in 
communication with the soul. The secret of fortune is 
joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is 

30 the self -helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. 
Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow 
with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces 
him because he did not need it. AVe solicitously and 



SELF-RELIANCE 51 

apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held 
on his way and scorned our disapprobation, Tlie gods 
love him because men hated him. "To the persevering 
mortal,'^ said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are 
swift." 5 

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their 
creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those 
foolish Israelites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die. 
Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." 
Everywhere I am bereaved of meeting God in my brother, 10 
because he has shut his own temple doors and recites 
fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's 
God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it 
prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, 
a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it im- 15 
poses its classification on other men, and lo ! a new sys- 
tem. In proportion always to the depth of the tliought, 
and so to the number of the objects it touches and 
brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. 
But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which 20 
are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on 
the great elemental thought of Duty and man's relation 
to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Sweden- 
borgianism. The pupil takes the same delight in sub- 
ordinating every thing to the new terminology that a girl 25 
does who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth 
and new seasons therel)y. It will happen for a time 
that the pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher — will 
find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his 
WTitings. This will continue until he has exhausted his 30 
master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classi- 
fication is idolized, passes for the end and not for a 
speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the sys- 
tem blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the 



52 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to 
them hung on the arch tlieir master built. They cannot 
imagine how you aliens have any right to see — how you 
can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light 
5 from us.' They do not yet perceive tliat light, unsys- 
tematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into 
theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If 
they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pin- 
fold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will 

10 rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and 
joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the 
universe as on the first morning. 

2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of Travel- 
ling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for 

15 all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, 
or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by 
rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by 
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. 
In manly hours we feel that duty is our place and that 

20 the merry men of circumstance should follow as they 
may. The soul is no traveller: the wise man stays at 
home with the soul, and when his necessities, his duties, 
on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign 
lands, he is at home still and is not gadding abroad from 

25 himself, and shall make men sensible by the expression 
of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wis- 
dom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign 
and not like an interloper or a valet. 

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation 

30 of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benev- 
olence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not 
go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater 
than he knows. He who travels to be amused or to get 
somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from 



SELF-RELIANCE 53 

himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. 
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become 
old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. 

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first 
journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I 5 
dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with 
beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace 
my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in 
Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad 
self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the 10 
Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with 
sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My 
giant goes with me wherever I go. 

3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom 
of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual 15 
action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal sys- 
tem of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel 
when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate ; 
and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? 
Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are 20 
garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our 
tastes, our whole minds, lean, and follow the Past and 
the Distant, as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. 
The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. 
It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. 25 
It was an application of his own thought to the thing to 
be done and the conditions to be observed. And why 
need w^e copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, 
convenience, grandeur of thouglit and quaint expression 
are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will 30 
study with hope and love of the precise thing to be done 
by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of 
the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of 
the government, he will create a house in which all these 



54 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will 
be satisfied also. 

Insist on yourself ; never imitate. Your ow^n gift you 
can present every moment with the cumulative force of 
5a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of 
another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. 
That which each can do best, none but his Maker can 
teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till 
that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who 

10 could have taught Shakspeare ? Where is the master who 
could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, 
or Xewton? Every great man is an unique. The 
Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not 
borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man 

15 imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great 
act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. 
Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shak- 
speare. Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst 
not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this 

20 moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as 
that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the 
Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different 
from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all 
eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat 

25 itself ; but if I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely 
I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice ; for the 
ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell 
up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey 
thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 

30 4. As our Eeligion, our Education, our Art look 
abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume 
themselves on the improvement of society, and no man 
improves. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 



SELF-RELIANCE 55 

side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only appar- 
ent like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes con- 
tinual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is 
christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change 
is not amelioration. For every thing that is given some- 5 
thing is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old 
instincts. AVliat a contrast between the well-clad, read- 
ing, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil 
and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New 
Zealander, v/hose property is a club, a spear, a mat and 10 
an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But 
compare the health of the two men and you shall see 
that the aboriginal strength, the white man has lost. If 
the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad 
axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as 15 
if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow 
shall send the white to his grave. 

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks 
so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva 20 
watch, but he has lost his skill to tell the hour by the 
sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being 
sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the 
street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he 
does not observe ; the equinox he knows as little ; and the 25 
whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his 
mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries 
overload his wit ; the insurance-office increases the num- 
ber of accidents; and it may be a question whether 
machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost 30 
by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched 
in establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. 
For every stoic was a stoic ; but in Christendom where is 
the Christian? 



56 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than 
in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are 
now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed 
between the great men of the iirst and of the last ages; 
5 nor can all the science^ art, religion, and philosophy of 
the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than 
Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. 
Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, 
Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no 

10 class. He who is really of their class will not be called 
by their name, but be wholly his own man, and in his 
turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of 
each period are only its costume and do not invigorate 
men. The harm of the improved machinery may compen- 

15 sate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so 
much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and 
Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of 
science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered 
a more splendid series of facts than any one since. 

20 Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. 
It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of 
means and machinery which were introduced with loud 
laudation a few years or centuries before. The great 
genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the im- 

25 provements of the art of war among the triumphs of 
science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the 
Bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor 
and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it 
impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases, "with- 

30 out abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and 
carriages, until, in imitation of the Eoman custom, the 
soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his 
hand-mill and bake his bread himself.'' 

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the 



SELF-RELIANCE 57 

water of which it is composed does not. The same par- 
ticle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity 
is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation 
to-day, die, and their experience with them. 

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance 5 
on governments which protect it, is the want of self- 
reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and 
at things so long that they have come to esteem what they 
call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned and 
civil institutions, as guards of property, and they dep-10 
recate assaults on these, because they feel them to be 
assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each 
other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a 
cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed 
of what he has, out of new respect for his being. Es-15 
pecially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental, 
came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he 
feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to him, has 
no root in him, and merely lies there because no revolu- 
tion or no robber takes it away. But that which a man 20 
is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man 
acquires, is permanent and living property, which does 
not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or 
fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews 
itself wherever the man is put. ''Thy lot or portion of 25 
life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee ; there- 
fore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence 
on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for 
numbers. The political parties meet in numerous con- 
ventions; the greater the concourse and with each new 30 
uproar of announcement. The delegation from Essex ! 
The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of 
Maine ! the young patriot feels himself stronger than 
before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like 



58 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

manner the reformers summon conventions and vote and 
resolve in multitude. But not so, friends! will the 
God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method 
precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from 
5 himself all external support and stands alone that I see 
him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every 
recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town ? 
Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou 
only firm column must presently appear the upholder of 

10 all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is 
in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked 
for good out of him and elsewhere, and, so perceiving, 
throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly 
rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands 

15 his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on 

his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. 

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 

with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. 

But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal 

20 with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the 
Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel 
of Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A 
political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick 
or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite 

25 external event raises your spirits, and you think good 
days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can 
never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. 
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of prin- 
ciples. 



COMPENSATION 

Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a dis- 
course on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very 
young that on this subject Life was ahead of theology 
and the people knew more than the preachers taught. 
The documents too from which the doctrine is to be 5 
drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and 
lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the 
tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the trans- 
actions of the street, the farm and the dwelling-house; 
the greetings, the relations, the debts and credits, the 10 
influence of character, the nature and endowment of all 
men. It seemed to me also that in it might be shown 
men a ray of divinity, the present action of the Soul of 
this world, clean from all vestige of tradition ; and so the 
heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal 15 
love, conversing with that which he knows was always 
and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared 
moreover that if this doctrine could be stated in terms 
with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which 
this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star 20 
in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, 
that would not suffer us to lose our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a 
sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his 
orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine 25 
of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is 
not executed in this world; that the wicked are success- 

59 



60 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from 
reason and Scripture a compensation to be made to both 
parties in the next life. No offense appeared to be taken 
by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could 
5 observe when the meeting broke up they separated with- 
out remark on the sermon. 

Yet what was the import of this teaching ? What did 
the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable 
in the present life ? Was it that houses and lands, offices, 

10 wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, 
whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a com- 
pensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving 
them the like gratifications another day, — bank-stock 
and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be 

15 the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that 
they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and 
serve men ? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate 
inference the disciple would draw was, "We are to have 
such a good time as the sinners have now" ; — or, to push 

20 it to its extreme import, — "You sin now, we shall sin 
by-and-by: we would sin now, if we could; not being 
--successful we expect our revenge to-morrow." 

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad 
are successful ; that justice is not done now. The blind- 

25ness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base 
estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly suc- 
cess, instead of confronting and convicting the world 
from the truth; announcing the Presence of the Soul; 
the omnipotence of the Will; and so establishing the 

30 standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood, and 
summoning the dead to its present tribunal. 

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the 
literary men when occasionally they treat the related 



COMPENSATION 61 

topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in 
decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it 
has displaced. But men are better than this theology. 
Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and 
aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own 5 
experience, and all men feel sometimes the falsehood 
which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than 
they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits 
without afterthought, if said in conversation would 
probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize 10 
in a mixed company on Providence and the divine 
laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well 
enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, 
but his incapacity to make his own statement. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 15 
record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
Compensation; happy beyond my expectation if i shall 
truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

Polarity^ or action and reaction, we meet in every 20 
part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and cold ; 
in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and female ; in the 
inspiration and expiration of plants and animals ; in the 
systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of 
fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal 25 
gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. 
Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle, the oppo- 
site magnetism takes place at the other end. If the 
south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you 
must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects 30 
nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another 
thing to make it whole ; as, spirit, matter ; man, woman ; 
subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, 
rest; yea, nay. 



62 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its 
parts. The entire system of things gets represented in 
every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb 
and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a 
5 single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each 
individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand 
in the elements, is repeated within these small bound- 
aries. For example, in the animal kingdom the physiol- 
ogist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a 

10 certain compensation balances every gift and every de- 
fect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a 
reduction from another part of the same creature. If 
the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extrem- 
ities are cut short. 

15 The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. 
What we gain in power is lost in time, and the converse. 
The jjeriodic or compensating errors of the planets is 
another instance. The influences of climate and soil in 
political history are another. The cold climate invigor- 

20ates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, 
tigers, or scorpions. 

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition 
of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect an 
excess. Every sweet hath its sour.; every evil its good. 

25 Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal 
penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its modera- 
tion with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain 
of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have 
gained something else ; and for every thing you gain, you 

30 lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that 
use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes 
out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the 
estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and 
exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily 



COMPENSATION 63 

seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the varieties 
of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always 
some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbear- 
ing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on 
the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong 5 
and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad 
citizen, — a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in 
him? — nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and 
daughters who are getting along in the dame's classes 
at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths 10 
his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to in- 
tenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and 
puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. 
But the President has paid dear for his White House. 15 
It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of 
his manly attributes. To preserve for a short tyiie so 
conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is con- 
tent to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect 
behind the throne. Or do men desire the more substan-20 
tial and permanent grandeur of genius? ISTeither has 
this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought 
is great and overlooks thousands, has the responsibility 
•of overlooking. With every influx of light comes new 
danger. Has he light ? he must bear witness to the light, 25 
and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such 
keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the 
incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife 
and child. Has he all that the world loves and admires 
and covets ? — he must cast behind him their admiration 30 
and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth and become 
a bj^ord and a hissing. 

This Law writes the laws of the cities and nations. It 
"will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. It is 



64 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things 
refuse to be mismanaged long, lies riolunt diu male ad- 
ministrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the 
checks exist, and will appear. If the government is 
5 cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, 
the revenue will yield nothing. If you make a criminal 
code sanguinary, juries will not convict. Nothing ar- 
bitrary, nothing artificial can endure. The true life and 
satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or 

10 felicities of condition and to establish themselves with 
great indifferency under all varieties of circumstance. 
Under all governments the influence of character re- 
mains the same, — in Turkey and New England about 
alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history 

15 honestly confesses that man must have been as free as 
culture could make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that the universe 
is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing 
in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every 

20 thing is made of one hidden stuff ; as the naturalist sees 
one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a 
horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a 
bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new 
form repeats not only the main character of the type, 

25but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, 
hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. 
Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend 
of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one 
is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, 

30 its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each 
one must somehow accommodate the whole man and 
recite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The micro- 
scope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect 



COMPENSATION 65 

for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, re- 
sistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take 
hold on eternity, — all find room to consist in the small 
creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true 
doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all 5 
his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the 
universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If 
the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the 
repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That 10 
soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a 
law. We feel its inspirations; out there in history we 
can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. All nature 
feels its grasp. "It is in the world, and the world was 
made by it." It is eternal but it enacts itself in time and 15 
space. Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity ad- 
justs its balance in all parts of life. Ot kv^ol At6s dd 
cvTrtTTTovo-t. The d ice of God are always loaded. The 
world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical 
equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. 20- 
Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor 
less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every 
crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong 
redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retri- 
bution is the universal necessity by which the whole 25 
appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there 
must be fire. If you see a hand or limb, you know that 
the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or in other words integrates 
itself, in a twofold manner : first in the thing, or in real 30 
nature ; and secondly in the circumstance, or in apparent 
nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. The 
casual retribution is in the thing and is seen by the soul. 
The retribution in the circumstance is seen bv the under- 



66 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

standing; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often 
spread over a long time and so does not become distinct 
until after many years. The specific stripes may follow 
late after the offence, but they follow because they ac- 
5 company it. Crime and punishment grow out of one 
stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens 
within the flower of the pleasure Avhich concealed it. 
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot 
be severed ; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the 

10 end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be 
disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appro- 
priate; for example, — to gratify the senses we sever the 
pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. 

15 The ingenuity of man has been dedicated to the solution 
of one problem, — how to detach the sensual sweet, the 
sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral 
sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to 
contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to 

20 leave it bottomless; to get a o?ie end, without an other 
end. The soul says, Eat ; the body would feast. The soul 
says. The man and woman shall be one flesh and one 
soul ; the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, 
Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue ; the 

25 body would have the power over things to its own ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through all 

things.. It would be the only fact. All things shall be 

added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. ' The 

particular man aims to be somebody ; to set up for him- 

30 self; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in 
particulars, to ride that he may ride ; to dress that he may 
be dressed ; to eat that he may eat ; and to govern, that he 
may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they would have 
offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be 



COMPENSATION 67 

great is to get only one side of nature, — the sweet, with- 
out tlie other side, — the bitter. 

Steadily is this dividing and detaching counteracted. 
Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the 
smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our 5 
hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit 
out of profitable things, power out of strong things, the 
moment we seek to separate them from the whole. We 
can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by 
itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no out- 10 
side, or a light without a shadow. "Drive out nature 
with a fork, she comes running back." 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which 
the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags 
that he does not know, brags that they do not touch him ; 15* 
— but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his 
soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack him in 
another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form 
and in appearance, it is because he has resisted his life 
and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much 20 
death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make 
this separation of the good from the tax, that the experi- 
ment would not be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — 
but for the circumstance that when the disease began in 
the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at 25 
once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in 
each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of 
an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mer- 
maid's head but not the dragon's tail, and thinks he can 
cut off that which he would have from that which he 30 
would not have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in 
the highest heavens in silence, thou only great God, 
sprinkling with a.n unwearied providence certain penal 
blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires!" 



68 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

The human soul is true to these facts in the painting 
of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. 
It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the 
Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having tradi- 

Stionally ascribed to him many base actions, they in- 
voluntarily made amends to Reason by tying up the 
hands of so bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king 
of England. Prometheus knows one secret which Jove 
must bargain for ; Minerva, another. He cannot get his 

10 own thunders ; Minerva keeps the key of them : 

Of all the gods, I only know the keys 

That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep. 

• A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of 

15 its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same 
ethics; and indeed it would seem impossible for any 
fable to be invented and get any currency which was not 
moral. .Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and so 
though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not 

20 quite invulnerable; for Thetis held him by the heel when 
she dipped him in the Styx and the sacred waters did not 
wash that part. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not 
quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was 
bathing in the Dragon's blood, and that spot which it 

25 covered is mortal. And so it always is. There is a crack 
in every thing God has made. Always it would seem 
there is this vindictive circumstance stealing in at un- 
awares even into the wild poesy in which the human 
fancy attempted to make bold holiday and to shake it- 

30 self free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of 
the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in nature 
nothing can be given, all things are sold. 

This is that ancient doctrine of ISTemesis, who keeps 



COMPENSATION 69 

watch in the Universe and lets no offence go unchastised. 
The Furies, they said, are attendants on Justice, and if 
the sun in heaven should transgress his path they would 
punish him. The poets related that stone walls and iron 
swords and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with 5 
the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax 
gave Hector dragged the Trojan hero over the field at 
the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which 
Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. 
They recorded that when the Thasians erected a statue 10 
to TJieagenes, a victor in the games, one of his rivals 
went to it by night and endeavored to throw it down by 
repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its ped- 
estal and was crushed to death beneath its fall. 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It 15 
came from thought above the will of the writer. That 
is the best part of each writer which has nothing private 
in it; that is the best part of each which he does not 
know ; that which flowed out of his constitution and not 
from his too active invention; that which in the study of 20 
a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study 
of many you would abstract as the spirit of them all. 
Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early 
Hellenic world that I would know. The name and cir- 
cumstance of Phidias, however convenient for history, 25 
embarrasses when we come to the highest criticism. We 
are to see that which man was tending to do in a given 
period, and was hindered, or, of you will, modified in 
doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, 
of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the moment 30 
wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the 
proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature of 
Reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without 



70 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each 
nation, are the sanctuary of the Intuitiuus. That which 
the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow 
the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to 
5 say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of 
laws, which the pulpit, the senate and the college deny, 
is hourly preached in all markets and all languages by 
flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as 
omnipresent as that of birds and flies. 

10 All things are double, one against another. — Tit for 
tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for 
blood ; measure for measure ; love for love. — Give, and it 
shall be given you. — He that watereth shall be watered 
himself. — What will you have ? quoth God ; pay for it and 

15 take it. — Nothing venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be 
paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — - 
Who doth not work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm 
catch. — Curses always recoil on the head of him who 
imprecates them. — If you put a chain around the neck 

20 of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. 
— Bad counsel confounds the adviser. — -The devil is an 

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our will 

25 by the laws of nature. W^e aim at a petty end quite aside 
from the public good, but our act arranges itself by ir- 
resistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. 
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. AVith his 
will or against his wall he draws his portrait to the eye 

30 of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts 
on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a 
mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. 
Or rather, it is a harpoon thrown at the whale, unwind- 
ing, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and, if the har- 



COMPENSATION 71 

poon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to 
cut the steeisnian in twain or to sink the boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No 
man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to 
him,"' said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life 5 
does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in 
the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in re- 
ligion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on 
himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as 
pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. 10 
If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. 
The senses would make things of all persons ; of women, 
of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, "I will get 
it from his purse or get it from his skin,'' is sound 
philosophy. 15 

All infractions of love and equity in our social rela- 
tions are speedily punished. They are punished by Fear. 
Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I 
have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water 
meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect 20 
diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon 
as there is any departure from simplicity and attempt at 
halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my 
neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as 
I have shrunk from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; 25 
there is war between us ; there is hate in him and fear in 
me. 

All the old abuses in society, the great and universal 
and the petty and particular, all unjust accumulations 
of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. 30 
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald 
of all revolutions. One thing he always teaches, that 
there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion 
crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, 



72 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our 
laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Eear 
for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over govern- 
ment and property. That obscene bird is not there for 

5 nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be 
revised. 

Of the like nature is that expectation of change which 
instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. 
The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, 

10 the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every 
generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble ascetic- 
ism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the 
balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. 
Experienced men of the world know very well that it 

15 is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a 
man often pays dear for a small frugality. The bor- 
rower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing 
who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? 
Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or 

20 cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money? 
There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of 
benefit on the one part and of debt on the other ; that is, 
of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains 
in the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every 

26 new transaction alters according to its nature their 
relation to each other. He may soon come to see that he 
had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden 
in his neighbor's coach, and that "the highest price he 
can pay for a thing is to ask for it." 

30 A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, 
and know that it is always the part of prudence to face 
every claimant and pay every just demand on your 
time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay ; for first 
or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and 



COMPENSATION 73 

events may stand for a time between you and justice, but 
it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your 
own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity 
which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of 
nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax 5 
is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. 
He is base, — and that is the one base thing in the uni- 
verse, — to receive favors and render none. In the order 
of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom 
we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we 10 
receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for 
deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much 
good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and 
worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 

Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 15 
Cheapest, says the prudent, is the dearest labor. What 
we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some 
application of good sense to a common want. It is best 
to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good 
sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense 20 
applied to navigation ; in the house, good sense applied to 
cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense ap- 
plied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your 
presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But 
because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in 25 
life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from him- 
self. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price 
of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and 
credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be 
counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, 30 
namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited 
or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but 
by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure 
motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot 



74 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

extort the benefit, cannot extort the knowledge of 
material and moral naiure which his honest care and 
pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do 
the thmg, and you snail have the power; but they who 
5 do not the thing have not the power. 

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpen- 
ing of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is 
one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of 
the universe. Everywhere and always this law is sub- 
10 lime. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the 
doctrine that every thing has its price, and if that price 
is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, 
and that it is impossible to get anything without its price, 
is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the 
15 budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all 
the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that 
the high laws which each man sees ever implicated in 
those processes with which he is conversant, the stern 
ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are meas- 
20ured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as 
manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history 
of a state, — do recommend to him his trade, and though 
seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. 
The league between virtue and nature engages all 
25 things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful 
laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the 
traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and 
benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a 
rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. 
30 There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, 
alid it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such 
as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and 
fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken 
word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot 



COMPENSATION 75 

draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Al- 
ways some damning circumstance transpires. The laws 
and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, gravitation, 
become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness 5 
for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All 
love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of 
an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, 
which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so 
that you cannot do him any harm ; but as the royal 10 
armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached cast 
down their colors and from enemies became friends, so 
do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, 
prove benefactors. 

Winds blow and waters roll 15 

Strength to the brave and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing. 

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. 
As no man had ever a point of pride that was not in- 
jurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not 20 
somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable 
admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the 
hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught 
in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in 
his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man 25 
thoroughly understands a truth until first lie has con- 
tended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance 
with the hindrances or talents of men until he has suf- 
fered from the one and seen the triumph of the other over 
his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper 30 
that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven 
to entertain himself alone and acquire habits of self-help ; 



76 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and thus, like the wounded oyster he mends his shell 
with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not until we 
are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awakens the 
5 indignation which arms itself with secret forces. A 
great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits 
on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he 
is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn 
something ; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood ; 

10 he has gained facts ; learns his ignorance ; is cured of the 
insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. 
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his 
assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find 
his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off 

15 from him like a dead skin and when they would triumph, 
lo ! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than 
praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long 
as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain as- 
surance of success. But as soon as honied words of 

20 praise are spoken for me I feel as one that lies unpro- 
tected before his enemies. In general, every evil to 
which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sand- 
wich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the 
enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the 

25 strength of the temptation we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect 
and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and 
fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institu- 
tions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men 

30 suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition 
that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a 
man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing 
to be and not to be at the same time. There is a third 
silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of 



COMPENSATION 77 

things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of 
every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. 
If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. 
Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. 
The longer the payment is withholden, the better for 5 
you ; for compound interest on compound interest is the 
rate and usage of this exchequer. 

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to 
cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope 
of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be 10 
many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of 
bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and 
traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily de- 
scending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of 
activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole 15 
constitution. It persecutes a principle ; it would whip a 
right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire 
and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who 
have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run 
with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming 20 
to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against 
the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. 
Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison a 
more illustrious abode; every burned book or house en- 
lightens the world ; every suppressed or expunged word 25 
reverberates through the earth from side to side. The 
minds of men are at last aroused ; reason looks out and 
justifies her own and malice finds all her work in vain. 
It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is 
undone. 30 

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circum- 
stances. The man is all. Ever3'thing has two sides, a 
good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn 



78 EMERSON'S -ESS A YS 

to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not 
the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on 
hearing these representations, — What boots it to do well ? 
there is one event to good and evil ; if I gain any good I 
5 must pay for it ; if I lose any good I gain some other ; all 
actions are indifferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, 
to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, 
but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of 

10 circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect 
balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Ex- 
istence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. 
Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self- 
balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts and 

15 times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx 
from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the 
same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the 
great Night or shade on which as a back-ground the living 
universe paints itself forth; but no fact is begotten by 

20 it; it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work any 
good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch 
as it is worse not to be than to be. 

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, 
because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy 

25 and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in 
visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his 
nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore out- 
witted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity 
and the lie with him he so far decreases from nature. In 

30 some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong 
to the understanding also ; but, should we not see it, this 
deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. 

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain 
of rectitude must be bousrht bv anv loss. There is no 



COMPENSATION 79 

penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper 
additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly am; 
in a virtuous act I add to the world ; I plant into deserts 
conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness 
receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no 5 
excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beaut}^, when 
these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The 
soul refuses all limits. It affirms in man always an 
Optimism, never a Pessimism. 

His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct 10 
is trust. Our instinct uses "more^' and "less" in appli- 
cation to man, always of the presence of the soul, and not 
of its absence ; the brave man is greater than the coward ; 
"the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not 
less, than the fool and knave. There is therefore no tax 15 
on the good of virtue, for that is the incoming of God 
himself, or absolute existence, without any comparative. 
All external good has its tax, and if it came without 
desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will 
blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, 20 
and may be had if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that 
is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no 
longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example to 
find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it 
new responsibility. I do not wish more external goods, 25 
— neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor per- 
sons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But 
there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation 
exists and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. 
Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract 30 
the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom 
of St. Bernard, "Nothing can work me damage except 
myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, 
and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." 



80 EMERSON'S ESSAYS] 

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the 
inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature 
seems to he the distinction of More and Less. How can 
Less not feel the pain ; how not feel indignation or malev- 
5olence towards More. Look at those who have less 
faculty, and one feels sad and knows not well what to 
make of it. Almost he shuns their eye; he fears they 
will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a 
great injustice. But see the facts nearly and these 

10 mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them 
as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and 
soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and 
Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother and my 
brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by 

15 great neighbors, I can get love; I can still receive; and 
he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. 
Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my 
guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, 
and the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It 

20 is the eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and make 
all things its own. Jesus and Shakespeare are frag- 
ments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate 
them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — is not 
that mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is 

25 not wit. 

Such also is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity 
of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is 
growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to grow, 

30 and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its 
whole S3^stem of things, its friends and. home and laws 
and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but 
stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and 
slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of 



COMPENSATION 81 

the individual these revolutions are frequent, until in 
some happier mind they are incessant and all worldly 
relations hang very loosely about him, becoming as it 
were a transparent fluid membrane through which the 
living form is always seen, and not, as in most men, an 5 
indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no 
settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then 
there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely 
recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be 
the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of 10 
dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not 
advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine ex- 
pansion, this growth comes by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our 15 
angels go. We do not see that they only go out that 
archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. 
We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper 
eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is 
any force in to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful 20 
yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent where 
once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe 
that the spirit can feed, cover and nerve us again. We 
cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. 
But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Al-25 
mighty saith, "Up and onward forevermore !" We cannot 
stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the New ; 
and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those mon- 
sters who look backwards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made ap- 30 
parent to the understanding also, after long intervals of 
time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a 
loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment 
unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal 



82 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The 
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed 
nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the as- 
pect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates 

5 revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of 
infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, 
breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style 
of living, and allows the formation of new ones more 
friendly to the growth of character. It permits or con- 

10 strains the formation of new acquaintances and the 
reception of new influences that prove of the first im- 
portance to the next years; and the man or woman who 
would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no 
room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, 

15 by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener 
is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and 
fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 



NATURE 

The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery: 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 

The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 

And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 

Beckons to spirit of its kin; 

Self -kindled every atom glows. 

And hints the future which it owes. 

There are days which occur in this climate, at almost 
any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its 
perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the 
earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her 
offspring ; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, 5 
nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest 
latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida 
and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of 
satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem 
to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may lo 
be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure 
October weather, which we distinguish by the name of 
the Indian Summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps 
over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived 
through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. 15 
The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. At the 
gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is 
forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise 

83 



84 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back 
with the first step he makes into these precincts. Here 
is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which 
discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the 

' 5 circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, 
and judges like a god all men that come to her. We 
have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the 
night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties 
dail}^ wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would 

10 escape the barriers which render them comparatively im- 
potent, escape the sophistication and second thought, 
and suffer nature to entrance us. The tempered light 
of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimu- 
lating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these 

15 places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and 
oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The 
incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with 
them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no his- 
tory, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine 

20 sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk 
onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new 
pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, 
until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded 
out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny 

25 of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature. 

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and 

heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to 

us. We come to our own, and make friends with matter, 

which the ambitious chatter of the schools would per- 

SOsuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the 
mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so 
is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. 
It is firm water : it is cold flame : what health, what af- 
finity ! Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and 



NATURE 85 

brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes 
in this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, 
and shames ns out of our nonsense. Cities give not the 
human senses room enough. We go out daily and 
nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so 5 
much scope, just as we need water for our bath. There 
are all degrees of natural influence, from these quaran- 
tine powers of nature, up to her dearest and gravest min- 
istrations to the imagination and the soul. There is 
the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood- 10 
fire to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety, — and 
there is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We 
nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites from 
her roots and grains, and we receive glances from the 
heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell 15 
the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in 
which romance and reality meet. I think, if we should 
be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should 
converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would 
be all that would remain of our furniture. 20 

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which 
we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of 
snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its 
perfect form; the bloAving of sleet over a wide sheet of 
water, and over plains; the waving rye-field; the mimic 25 
waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets 
whiten and ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees 
and flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical steaming odorous 
south wind, which converts all trees to windharps; the 
crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of 30 
pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the 
sitting-room, — these are the music and pictures of the 
most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, 
with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. 



86 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, 
and with one stroke of the paddle^, I leave the village 
politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages 
and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm 
5 of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted 
man to enter without noviciate and probation. We pene- 
trate bodily this incredible beauty : we dip our hands in 
this painted element : our eyes are bathed in these lights 
and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the 

10 proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and 
beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, es- 
tablishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, 
these delicately emerging stars, with their private and 
ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught 

15 the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns 
and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that 
they must work as enchantment and sequel to this origi- 
nal beauty. I am over-instructed for my return. Hence- 
forth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. 

20 1 am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no 
longer live without elegance : but a countryman shall be 
my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who 
knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the 
waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these 

25 enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far 
as the masters of the world have called in nature to their 
aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is 
the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden- 
houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their faulty 

30 personality with these strong accessories. I do not 
wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in 
the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe 
and invite ; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, 
but these tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret 



NATURE 87 

promises. We heard what the rich man said, we knew 
of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his company, but the 
provocation and point of the invitation came out of these 
beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I see what men 
strove to realize in some V-ersailles, or Paphos, or Ctesi- 5 
phon. Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, 
and the blue sky for the background, which save all our 
works of art, which were otherwise bawbles. When the 
rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they 
should consider the effect of men reputed to be the pos- 10 
sesors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah ! if the rich 
were rich as the poor fancy riches ! A hoy hears a mili- 
tary band play on the field at night, and he has kings and 
queens and famous chivalry palpably before him. He 
hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the 15 
Notch Mountains, for example, which converts the 
mountains into an ^olian harp, and this supernatural 
tiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, 
Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a 
musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To 20 
the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of 
society; he is loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich 
for the sake of his imagination ; how poor his fancy would 
be, if they were not rich! That they have some high- 
fenced grove, which they call a park; that they live in 25 
larger and better-garnished saloons than he has visited, 
and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, 
to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the ground- 
work from which he has delineated .estates of romance, 
compared with which their actual possessions are shanties 30 
and paddocks. The muse herself betrays her son, and 
enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born beauty, by a 
radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that 
skirt the road, — a certain haughty favor, as if from 



88 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

patrician genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in 
nature, a prince of the power of the air. 

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes 
so easily, may not be always found, but the material land- 
5 scape is never far off. We can find these enchantments 
without visiting the Como Lake, or the Madeira Islands. 
We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every 
landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of 
the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first 

10 hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The 
stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest 
common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they 
shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of 
Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning 

15 and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The 
difference between landscape and landscape is small, but 
there is great difference in the beholders. There is noth- 
ing so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the 
necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape 

20 lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty 
breaks in everywhere. 

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers 
on this topic, which schoolmen called natura naturata, 
or nature passive. One can hardly speak directly of it 

25 without excess. It is as easy to broach in mixed com- 
panies what is called "the subject of religion." A sus- 
ceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this 
kind, without the apology of some trivial necessity; he 
goes to see a wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or to 

30 fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality, or he 
carries a fowling-piece, or a fishing-rod. I suppose this 
shame must have a good reason. A dilettantism in 
nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of fields is no 
better than his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally 



NATURE 89 

hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose that 
such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians should 
furnish facts for, would take place in the most sump- 
tuous drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's 
chaplets" of the book-shops; yet ordinarily, whether we 5 
are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever 
cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall 
into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, 
who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most 
continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the ad- 10 
mirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot re- 
nounce the right of returning often to this old topic. The 
multitude of false churches accredits the true religion. 
Literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this 
unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can 15 
affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved by 
what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, al- 
though, or rather because there is no citizen. The sun- 
set is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants 
men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal 20 
and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, 
that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there 
would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in 
the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is 
gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, 25 
that we turn from the people, to find relief in the 
majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the 
architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly 
separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be 
done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque 30 
is inseparable from our protest against false society. 
Man is fallen ; nature is erect, and serves as a differential 
thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the 
divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and 



90 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are 
convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the 
foaming brook with compunction : if our own life flowed 
with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The 
6 stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex 
rajs of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied 
as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; 
Psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where our 
spoons are gone) ; and anatomy and physiology, become 

10 phrenology and palmistry. 

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things 
unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage 
to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick 
cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snow; 

15 itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and mul- 
titudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, 
a shepherd,) and in undescribable variety. It publishes 
itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, 
through transformation on transformation to the highest 

20 symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a 
shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is 
all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly 
cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. 
All changes pass without violence, by reason of the two 

25 cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless 
time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of 
nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school meas- 
ures, and exchange our Mosiac and Ptolemaic schemes 
for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for want 

30 of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must 
round themselves before the rock is formed, then before 
the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disin- 
tegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened 
the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Po- 



NATURE 91 

mona, to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite ! how far 
the quadruped I how inconceivably remote is man! All 
duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long 
way from granite to the oyster ; farther yet to Plato, and 
the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all 5 
must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides. 

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first 
and second secrets of nature: Motion and Eest. The 
whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, 
or the signet of a ring. The whirling bubble on the 10 
surface of a brook, admits us to the secret of the mechan- 
ics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. 
A little water made to rotate in a cup explains the forma- 
tion of the simpler shells; the addition of matter from 
year to year, arrives at last at the most complex form ; 15 
and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, that 
from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has 
but one stuff, — ^but one stuff with its two ends, to serve 
up all her dream-like variety! Compound it how^ she 
will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, 20 
and betrays the same properties. 

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to con- 
travene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to 
transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find 
its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, 25 
she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. Space 
exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a 
bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omni- 
presence. The direction is forever onward, but the artist 
still goes back for materials, and begins again with the 30 
first elements on the most advanced stage : otherwise, all 
goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch 
a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young 
of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope 



92 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ever upward toward consciousness; the trees are imper- 
fect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment^ 
rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and pro- 
bationer of a more advanced order. The men, though 
Syoung, having tasted the first drop from the cup of 
thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns 
are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come to 
consciousness, they too will curse and swear. Flowers so 
strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to 

10 feel that their beautiful generations concern not us: we 
have had our day ; now let the children have theirs. The 
flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors with our ridicu- 
lous tenderness. 

Things are so strictly related, that according to the 

15 skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and proper- 
ties of any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to 
see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us 
of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the 
city. That identity makfes us all one, and reduces to 

20 nothing great intervals on our customary scale. We talk 
of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were 
not also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in .the 
boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and 
aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, 

25 and is directly related, there amid essences and billets- 
doux, to Himmaleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the 
globe. If we consider how much we are nature's, we need 
not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or 
benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. 

30 Nature who made the mason, made the house. We may 
easily hear too much of rural influences. The cool dis- 
engaged air of natural objects, makes tliem enviable to 
us, chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we 
think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and 



NATURE 93 

eat roots ; but let us be men instead of woodchucks, and 
the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit 
in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk. 

This guiding identity runs through all the surprises 
and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes every law. 5 
Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy 
and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the his- 
tory of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he 
the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known 
fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment 10 
of somebody, before it was actually verified. A man does 
not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the 
farthest regions of nature : moon, plant, gas, crystal, are 
concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows 
its own, and recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical 15 
experiment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, 
Davy, and Black, is the same common sense which made 
the arrangements which now it discovers. 

If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter 
action runs also into organization. The astronomers 20 
said, ^Give us matter, and a little motion, and we will 
construct the universe. It is not enough that we should 
have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one 
shove to launch the mass, and generate the harmony of 
the centrifugal and centripetal forces. Once heave the 25 
ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty 
order grew.' — ^A very unreasonable postulate/ said the 
metaphysicians, ^and a plain begging of the question. 
Could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection, 
as well as the continuation of it?' ^N'ature, meanwhile, 30 
had not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, 
bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no 
great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right 
in making much of it, for there is no end to the con- 



94 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

sequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push 
propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and 
through every atom ol ever}- ball, through all the races of 
creatures, and through the history and performances of 
5 every individual. Exaggeration is in the course of things. 
Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without 
adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the 
planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to 
every creature nature added a little violence of direction 

10 in its proper path, a shove to |)ut it on its way ; in every 
instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much. Without 
electricity the air would rot, and without this violence of 
direction, which men and women have, without a spice 
of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We 

15 aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath 
some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when now 
and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who 
sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play, 
but blabs the secret; — how then? is the bird flown? 

20 no, the wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, 
of lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction 
to hold them fast to their several aim; makes them a 
little wrong-headed in that direction in which they are 
Tightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl, for 

25 a generation or two more. The child with his sweet 
pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight 
and sound, without any power to compare and rank his 
sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to 
a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing 

30 everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every 
new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, 
which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. 
But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, 
dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has 



NATURE 95 

secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by 
all these attitudes and exertions, — an end of the first im- 
portance, which could not be trusted to any care less per- 
fect than her own. This glitter, this opaline lustre plays 
round the top of every toy to his eye, to ensure his fidelity, 5 
and he is deceived to his good. We are made alive and 
kept alive by the same arts. Let the stoics say what they 
please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because 
the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The vege- 
table life does not content itself with casting from the 10 
flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and 
earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands 
perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds 
may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at 
least, one may replace the parent. All things betray the 15 
same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which 
the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, 
starting at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, pro- 
tects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from 
some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in mar- 20 
riage his private felicity and perfection, with no pros- 
pective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own 
■end, namely, progen^^ or the perpetuity of the race. 

But the craft with which the world is made, runs also 
into the mind and character of men. No man is quite 25 
sane ; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight 
determination of blood to the head, to make sure of 
holding him hard to some one point which nature had 
taken to heart. Great causes are never tried on their 
merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit 30 
the size of the partisans, and the contention is ever hot- 
test on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the over- 
faith of each man in the importance of what he has to 
do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for 



96 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets 
spoken. The strong, self-complacent Luther declares 
with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that "God him- 
self cannot do without wise men/' Jacob Behmen and 
5 George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of 
their controversial tracts, and James Xaylor once suf- 
fered himself to be worshipped as the Christ. Each 
prophet comes presently to identify himself with his 
thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. How- 

10 ever this may discredit such persons with the judicious, 
it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, 
and publicity to their words. A similar experience is not 
infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent per- 
son writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer 

15 and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages 
thus written are, to him, burning and fragrant : he reads 
them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star ; 
he wets them with his tears: they are sacred; too good 
for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest 

20 friend. This is the man-child that is born to the soul, 
and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical 
cord has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, 
he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed ex- 
perience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes 

25 the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes ? The 
friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writ- 
ing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes 
the other party with astonishment and vexation. He 
cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and nights of 

30 fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of 
light, have engraved their shadowy characters on that 
tearstained book. He suspects the intelligence or the 
heart of his friend. Is there then no friend ? He can- 
not yet credit that one may have impressive experience. 



NATURE 97 

and yet may not know how to put his private fact into 
literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has 
other tongues and ministers than we, that though we 
should hold our peace, the truth would not the less be 
spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. 5 
A man can only speak, so long as he does not feel his 
speech to be partial and inadequate. It is partial, but 
he does not see it to be so, whilst he utters it. As soon 
as he is released from the instinctive and particular, and 
sees its partiality, he^shuts his mouth in disgust. For, 10 
no man can write anything, who does not think that what 
he writes is for the time the history of the world ; or do 
anything well, who does not esteem his work to be of im- 
portance. My work may be of none, but I must not think 
it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity. 15 

In like manner, there is throughout nature something 
mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives 
nowhere, keeps no faith with us. All promise outruns 
the performance. We live in a system of approximations. 
Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also 20 
temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are 
encamped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and 
thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; but bread and 
wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us hungry 
and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same 25 
with all our arts and performances. Our music, our 
poetry, our language itself are not satisfactions, but sug- 
gestions. The hunger for wealth, which reduces the 
planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. What is the 
end sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense 30 
and beauty from the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity 
of any kind. But what an operose method ! Wliat a 
train of means to secure a little conversation ! This 
palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen. 



98 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

these stables, horses and equij^age, this bankstock, and 
file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house 
and cottage by the waterside, all for a little conversation, 
high, clear, and spiritual ! Could it not be had as well 
5 by beggars on the highway? No, all these things came 
from successive efforts of these beggars to remove friction 
from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conver- 
sation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth was 
good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the 

10 smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought 
friends together in a warm and quiet room, and kept the 
children and the dinner-table in a different apartment. 
Thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends ; but it was known 
that men of thought and virtue sometimes had the head- 

15 ache, or wet feet, or could lose good time whilst the 
room was getting warm in winter days. Unluckily, in 
the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, 
the main attention has been diverted to this object; the 
old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction 

20 has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men ; 
and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments 
generally of the world, are cities and governments of the 
rich, and the masses are not men, but 2^oor men, that is, 
men who would be rich ; this is the ridicule of the class, 

25 that they arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere ; 
when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like one 
who has interrupted the conversation of a company to 
make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to 
say. The appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an 

30 aimless society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of 
nature so great and cogent as to exact this immense 
sacrifice of men? 

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as 
might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the 



NATURE 99 

face of external nature. There is in woods and waters 
a certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure 
to yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is 
felt in every landscape. I have seen the softness and 
beauty of the summer-clouds floating feathery overhead, 5 
enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of 
motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the drapery 
of this place and hour, as fore-looking to some pavilions 
and gardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy : 
but the poet finds himself not near enough to his ob-10 
ject. The pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before 
him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still else- 
where. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection 
and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now 
at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the 15 
neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in 
the adjacent woods. The present object shall give you 
this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has 
just gone by. What splendid distance, what recesses of 
ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset ! But who 20 
can go where they are, Or lay his hand or plant his foot 
thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever 
and ever. It is the same among the men and women, as 
among the silent trees, always a referred existence, an 
absence, never a presence and satisfaction. It is that 25 
beauty can never be grasped? in persons and in land- 
scape is equally inaccessible? The accepted and be- 
trothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in 
her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pur- 
sued her as a star: she cannot be heaven, if she stoops 30 
to such a one as he. 

What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of 
that first projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking 
of so many well-meaning creatures ? Must we not sup- 



100 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

pose somewhere in the universe a slight treachery and 
derision? Are we not engaged to a serious res.entment 
of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, 
and fools of nature ? One look at the face of heaven and 
dearth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser 
convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself 
into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. 
Her secret is untold. Many and many an (Edipus ar- 
rives : he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. 

10 x\las ! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill ; no syllable 
can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like 
the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing 
was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the 
return of the curve. But it also appears, that our actions 

15 are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than 
we designed. We are escorted on every hand through 
life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in 
wait for us. We cannot bandy words with nature, or 
deal with her as we deal with persons. If we measure 

20 our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as 
if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, 
instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel 
that the soul of the workman streams through us, we 
shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our 

25 hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chem- 
istry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in 
their highest form. 

The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness 
in the chain of causes occasions us, results from looking 

30 too much at one condition of nature, namel}^, Motion. 
But the drag is never taken from the wheel. Wherever 
the impulse exceeds, the Eest or Identity insinuates its 
compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows 
the prunella or self-heal. Aiter every foolish day we 



NATURE ' 101 

sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; and though 
we are always engaged with particulars, and often en- 
slaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the 
innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the 
mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever em- 5 
bodied, a present sanity to expose and cure the insanity 
of men. Our servitude to particulars betrays into a 
hundred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new era 
from the invention of a locomotive, or a balloon; the 
new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that 10 
by electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the 
seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner : it is a sym- 
bol of our modern aims and endeavors, — of our conden- 
sation and acceleration of objects : but nothing is gained : 
nature cannot be cheated : man's life is but seventy salads 15 
long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks 
and impossibilities, however, we find our advantage, not 
less than in the impulses. Let the victory fall where it 
will, we are on that side. And the knowledge that we 
traverse the whole scale of being, from the centre to the 20 
poles of nature, and have some stake in every possibility, 
lends that sublime lustre to death, which philosophy and 
religion have too outwardly and literally striven to ex- 
press in the popular doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. The reality is more excellent than the report. 25 
Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The 
divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the 
incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought, again, 
as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind pre- 
cipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping 30 
again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue 
and pungency of the influence on the mind of natural 
objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man im- 
prisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man 



102 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

impersonated. That power which does not respect 
quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its 
equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and 
distils its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment 

5 instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into 
every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it 
convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it en- 
veloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheer- 
ful labor ; we did not guess its essence, until after a long 

10 time. 



FRIENDSHIP 

A ruddy drop of manly blood 
The surging sea outweighs; 
The world uncertain comes ai-^ goes, 
The lover rooted stays. 
I fancied he was fled, 
And, after many a year, 
Glowed unexhausted kindliness 
^Like daily sunrise there. 
My careful heart was free again,— 
O friend, my bosom said, 
Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
Through thee the rose is red. 
All things through thee take nobler form 
And look beyond the earth, 
The mill-round of our fate appears 
A sun-path in thy worth. 
Me too thy nobleness has taught 
To master my despair; 
The fountains of my hidden life 
Are through thy friendship fair. 

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever 
spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east 
winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with 
an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons 
we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet 
we honor, and who honor us ! How many we see in the 
street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we 
warmly rejoice to be with ! Eead the language of these 
wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth. 

103 



104 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is 
a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common 
speech the emotions of benevolence and complacency 
which are felt towards others are likened to the material 
5 effects of fire ; so swift, or much more swift, more active, 
more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From 
the highest degree of passionate love to the lowest degree 
of good-will, they make the sweetness of life. 

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our 

10 affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his 
years of meditation do not furnish him with one good 
thought or happy expression ; but it is necessary to write 
a letter to a friend, — and forthwith troops df gentle 
thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen 

15 words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect 
abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger 
causes. A commended stranger is Expected and an- 
nounced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain 
invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost 

20 brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. 
The house is dusted, all things fly into their places, the 
old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up 
a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only 
the good report is told by others, only the good and new 

25 is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is 
what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we 
ask how we should stand related in conversation and 
action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The 
same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better 

30 than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer 
memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. 
For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, grace- 
ful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secret- 
est experience, so that they who sit by, of our own 



FRIENDSHIP 105 

kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at 
our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins 
to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects into 
the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, 
the last and best he will ever hear from us. He is no 5 
stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension 
are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get 
the order, the dress and the dinner, — but the throbbing 
of the heart and the communications of the soul, no more. 

Pleasant are these jets of affection which relume 10 
a young world for me again. Delicious is a just and 
firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling. How 
beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the 
steps and forms of the gifted and the true ! The 
moment we indulge our affections, the earth is meta- 15 
morphosed; there is no winter and no night; all 
tragedies, all ennuis vanish, — all duties even; nothing 
fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant 
of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that some- 
where in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and 20 
it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand 
years. 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for 
my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the 
Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his 25 
gifts ? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am 
not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and 
the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my 
gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes 
mine, — a possession for all time. Nor is Nature so poor 30 
but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we 
weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations ; 
and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate them- 
selves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our 



106 ■ EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a 
traditionary globe. My friends have come to me un- 
sought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest 
right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find 
5 them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them 
derides and cancels the thick walls of individual char- 
acter, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually 
connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe 
you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to 

10 new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all 
my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard, — 
poetry without stop, — hymn, ode and epic, poetry still 
flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these 
too separate themselves from me again, or some of them ? 

15 1 know not, but I fear it not ; for my relation to them is 
so pure that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius 
of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert 
its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and 
women, wherever I may be. 

20 I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this 
point. It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the 
sweet poison of misused wine" of the affections. A 
new person is to me a great event and hinders me from 
sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons whicH 

25 have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the 
day; it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my 
action is very little modified. I must feel pride in my 
friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, and a 
property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is 

30 praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his en- 
gaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our 
friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, 
his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that 
is his, — his name, his form, his dress, books and in- 



FRIENDSHIP 107 

struments, — fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds 
new and larger from his mouth. 

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not with- 
out their analogy in the ebb and iiow of love. Friend- 
ship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be 5 
believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half knows 
that she is not verily that which he worships ; and in the 
golden hour of friendship we are surprised with shades 
of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on 
our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards 10 
worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine 
inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect 
men as it respects itself. In strict science all persons 
underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. 
Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the meta- 15 
physical foundation of this Elysian temple ? Shall I not 
be as real as the things I see ? If I am, I shall not fear 
to know them for what they are. Their essence is not 
less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer 
organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not 20 
unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we 
cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production 
of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it 
should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man 
who stands united with his thought conceives magnifi-25 
cently of himself. He is conscious of a universal suc- 
cess, even though bought by uniform particular failures. 
No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any 
match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own 
poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your 30 
consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star daz- 
zles ; the planet has a faint, moonlike ray. I hear what 
you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the 
party you praise, but I see well that, for all his purple 



108 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

cloaks, I shall not like him, unless he is at least a poor 
Greek like me. I cannot deny it, friend, that the vast 
shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied 
and painted immensity, — thee also, compared with whom 

sail else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as 
Justice is, — thou art not my soul, but a picture and ef- 
figy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already 
thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the 
soul puts forth friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and 

10 presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the 
old leaf ? The law of nature is alternation for evermore. 
Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul 
environs itself with friends that it may enter into a 
grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone 

15 for a season that it may exalt its conversation or society. 
This method betrays itself along the whole history of our 
personal relations. The instinct of affection revives the 
hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of 
insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man 

20 passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he 
should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter 
like this to each new candidate for his love :^ 

Dear Friend, 

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to 

25 match my mood with thine, I should never think again 
of .trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I am 
not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and I 
respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet 
dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, 

30 and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, 
or never. 

Yat these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for 
curiosity and not for life. They are not to be indulged. 



FRIENDSHIP 109 

This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships 
hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have 
made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the 
tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friend- 
shjp are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of 5 
nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and 
petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at 
the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which 
many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek 
our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion 10 
which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. 
We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, 
as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all 
poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to 
meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what 15 
is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each 
of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each 
other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual 
society, even of the virtuous and gifted ! After inter- 
views have been compassed with long foresight we must 20 
be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, un- 
seasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal 
spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our 
faculties do not play us true and both parties are relieved 
by solitude. 25 

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no 
difference how many friends I have and what content I 
can flnd in conversing with each, if there be one to whom 
I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one con- 
test, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and 30 
cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other 
friends my asylum : — 

The valiant warrior famoused for fighf^ 
After a hundred victories, once foiled, 



1 10 EMERSON'S ESS A YS 

Is from the book of honor razed quite 
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled. 

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness 
and apathy are a tough husk in which a delicate organi- 

5zation is protected from premature ripening. It wc^ld 
be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were 
yet ripe enough to know and own it. Eespect the Natur- 
langsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, 
and works in duration in which Alps and Andes come 

10 and go as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no 
heaven which is the price of rashness. Love^ which is the 
essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of 
man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, 
but the austerest worth ; let us approach our friend with 

15 an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the 

breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. 

The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, 

and I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate 

social benefit, to speak of that select and sacred relation 

20 which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the 
language of love suspicious and common, so much is this 
purer, and nothing is so much divine. 

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with 
roughest courage. When they are real, they are not 

25 glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we 
know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what 
do we know of nature or of ourselves ? Not one step has 
man taken toward the solution of the problem of his 
destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole 

30 universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and 
peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's 
soul is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought 
is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that 
shelters a friend ! It might well be built, like a festal 



FRIENDSHIP 111 

bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, 
if he know the solemnity of that relation and honor its 
law! He who offers himself a candidate for that cove- 
nant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games 
where the first-born of the world are the competitors. 5 
He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, 
Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has 
truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy 
of his beauty from the wear and tear, of all these. The' 
gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the 10 
speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness and 
the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go 
to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that 
I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why 
either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is 15 
a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may 
think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a 
man so real and equal that I may drop even those under- 
most garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second 
thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him 20 
with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemi- 
cal atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, 
like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank; 
that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above 
it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. 25 
At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. 
We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by 
compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We 
cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. 
I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast 30 
off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and com- 
monplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he 
encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At 
first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. 



112 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

But persisting — as indeed he could not help doing — for 
some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of 
bringing every man of his acquaintance into true rela- 
tions with him. xn'o man would think of speaking falsely 
5 with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets 
or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so 
much sincreity to the like plaindealing, and what love 
of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he 
did certainly show Jiim. But to most of us society shows 

10 not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand 
in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of 
insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost 
every man we meet requires some civility — requires to be 
humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of 

15 religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be 
questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. 
But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my in- 
genuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment 
without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend 

20 therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone 
am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I 
can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now, 
the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety 
and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that 

25 a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of 
nature. 

The other element of friendship is Tenderness. We 
are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, 
by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admira- 

SOtion, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, — but 
we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist 
in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so 
blessed and w^e so pure that we can offer him tenderness ? 
Vfhen a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal 



FRIENDSHIP lU 

of fortune. I find very little written directly to the heart 
of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which 
I cannot choose but remember. My author says, — ''I 
offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I ef- 
fectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I 5 
am the most devoted."^ I wish that friendship should 
have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant 
itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I 
wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a 
cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a 10 
commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; 
it is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it 
holds the pall at the funeral ; and quite loses sight of the 
delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we 
cannot find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet 15 
on the other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins 
his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance 
by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity 
and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friend- 
ship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much 20 
prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the 
silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of 
encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle 
and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship 
is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be 25 
joined ; more strict than any of which we have experience. 
It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and 
passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days and 
graceful gifts and country rambles, but also for rough 
roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty and persecution. 30 
It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the 
trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the 
daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by 
courage, wisdom and unity. It should never fall into 



114 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

something usual and settled, but should be alert and 
inventive and add rhyme and reason to what was 
drudgery. 

Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and 
5 costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, 
and withal so circumstanced (for even in that particular, 
a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether 
paired), that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. 
It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who 

10 are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more 
than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps 
because I have never known so high a fellowship as 
others. I please my imagination more with a circle of 
godlike men and women variously related to each other 

15 and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I 
find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, 
which is the practice and consummation of friendship. 
Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as 
good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering 

20 discourse at several times with two several men, but let 
all three of you come together and you shall not have 
one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may 
hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the 
most sincere and searching sort. In good company there 

25 is never such discourse between two, across the table, as 
takes place when you leave them alone. In good com- 
pany the individuals merge their egotism into a social 
soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses 
there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no 

30 fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are 
there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then 
speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, 
and not poorly limited to his own. Now this conven- 
tion, which good sense demands, destroys the high free- 



FRIENDSHIP 115 

dom of great conversation, which requires an absolute 
running of two souls into one. 

No two men but being left alone with each other enter 
into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines 
which two shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy 5 
to each other, will never suspect the latent powers of 
each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversa- 
tion, as if it w;ere a permanent property in some individ- 
uals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, — no more. 
A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he 10 
cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. 
They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would 
blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the 
sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his 
thought he will regain his tongue. 15 

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness 
and unlikeness that piques each with the presence of 
power and of consent in the other party. Let me be 
alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend 
should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. 20 
I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. 
Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only 
joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is 
mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance 
or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of con- 25 
cession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend 
than his echo. The condition which high friendship 
demands is ability to do without it. That high office 
requires great and sublime parts. There must be very 
two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance 30 
of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, 
mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep 
identity which, beneath these disparities, unites them. 

He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; 



116 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

who is sure that greatness and goodness are always econ- 
omy ; who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. 
Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the dia- 
mond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births 
5 of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treat- 
ment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are 
self-elected. Eeverence is a great part of it. Treat 
your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that 
are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must 

10 needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give 
those merits room; let them mount and expand. Are 
you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of his thought ? 
To a great heart he will be a stranger in a thousand 
particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. 

15 Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, 
and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead 
of the pure nectar of God. 

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long pro- 
bation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful 

20 souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash per- 
sonal relations with your friend ? Why go to his house, 
or know his mother and brother and sisters? Wliy be 
visited by him at your own ? Are these things material 
to our covenant ? Leave this touching and clawing. Let 

25 him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a 
sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, 
nor pottage. I can get politics and chat and neighborly 
conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the 
society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and 

30 great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is 
profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that 
sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that 
divides the brook ? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that 
standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty 



FRIENDSHIP 117 

of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reduc- 
ing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship liis supe- 
riorities ; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and 
tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him 
be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, 5 
devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be 
soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the 
light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is 
too near. To my friend I write a letter and from him I 
receive a letter. That seems to you a little. Me it suf- 10 
fices. It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give and of 
me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines 
the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, 
and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all 
the annals of heroism have yet made good. 15 

Eespect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not 
to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its 
opening. We must be our own before we can be another's. 
There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according 
to the Latin proverb ; — you can speak to your accomplice 20 
on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, cequat. To those 
whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the 
least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, 
the entire relation. There can never be deep peace be- 
tween two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their 25 
dialogue each stands for the whole world. 

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what 
grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may 
hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who 
set you to cast about what 3^ou should say to the select 30 
soul, or how to say anything to such? No matter how 
ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are 
innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to 
say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall 



118 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting over- 
powers you, until day and night avail themselves of 
your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue ; the only 
way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come 
5 nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his 
soul only flees the faster from you, and ypu shall never 
catch a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off 
and they repel us ; why should we intrude ? Late, — very 
late, — we perceive that no arrangements, no introduc- 

lOtions, no consuetudes or habits of society would be of 
any avail to establish us in such relations with them as 
we desire, — but solely the uprise of nature in us to the 
same degree it is in them; then shall we meet as water 
with water; and if we should not meet them then, we 

15 shall not want them, for we are already they. In the 
last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's owi^ 
worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes ex- 
changed names with their friends, as if they would 
signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. 

20 The higher the style we demand of friendship, of 
course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. 
We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire 
are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever 
the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the 

25 universal power, souls are now acting, enduring and dar-. 
ing, which can love us and which we can love. We may 
congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of 
follies, of blunders and of shame, is passed in solitude, 
and when we are finished men we shall grasp heroic 

30 hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you 
already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap 
persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience 
betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god 
attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit 



FRIENDSHIP 119 

the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, 
so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, 
and you draw to you the first-born of the world, — those 
rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature 
at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spec- 5 
tres and shadows merely. 

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spir- 
itual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever 
correction of our popular views we make from insight, 
nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem 10 
to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let 
us feel if we will the absolute insulation of man. We are 
sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pur- 
sue persons, or w^e read books, in the instinctive faith 
that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves. 15 
Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe, 
an old faded garment of dead persons; the books, their 
ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this 
mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends fare- 
well, and defy them, sa3dng, "Who are you? Unhand 20 
me : I will be dependent no more." Ah ! seest thou not, 
brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a 
higher platform, and only be more each other's because 
we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he 
looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all 25 
my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and 
the harbinger of a greater friend. 

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I 
would have them where I can find them, but I seldom 
use them. We must have society on our own terms and 30 
admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford 
to speak much Avith my friend. If he is great he makes 
me so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the 
great days, presentiments hover before me in the firma- 



120 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ment. I ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go 
in that I may seize them, I go out that I may seize them. 
I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky 
in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. 
5 Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk 
with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. 
It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit 
this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy or search of 
stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you ; but 

10 then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of 
my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have 
languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself 
with foreign objects ; then I shall regret the lost literature 
of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But 

15 if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with 
new visions ; not with yourself but with your lustres, and 
I shall not be able any more than now to converse with 
you. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent inter- 
course. I will receive from them not what they have but 

20 what they are. They shall give me that which properly 
tJiey cannot give, but which emanates from them. But 
they shall not hold me by any relations less subtle and 
pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as 
though we parted not. 

25 It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, 
to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due 
correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber 
myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? 
It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide 

30 and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on 
the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the 
crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will 
presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own 
shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost 



FRIENDSHIP 121 

soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is 
thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great 
will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love 
transcends the unworthy object and dwells and broods 
on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask 5 
crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth and 
feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may 
hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. 
The essence of friendship is. entireness, a total mag- 
nanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for 10 
infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify 
both. 



NOTES 



MANNERS 

This essay is from the Second Series, 1844. The subject of 
manners always interested Emerson; he has written on it 
repeatedly. In the pubhshed Journal there are twenty direct 
comments on manners, courtesy, society, and the like that are 
not later used in the essays and lectures; 1824, 1826 (two), 
1833, 1835 (three), 1837 (two), 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1849, 
1850, 1851, 1852, 1856, 1858, 1860. In the winter of 1836-37 
he gave a lecture on '' Manners" in Boston; and in the winter 
of 1841-2 another, the one which formed the basis of this essay. 
The next winter in New York in a course on New England he 
gave a lecture on "New England Manners and Customs." 
Besides this essay there are several which treat either exclusively 
or at some length of the same subject: "Behaviour" in Conduct 
of Life, "Social Aims" in Letters and Social Ai7ns, "Domestic 
Life" in Society and Solitude. Chapters vi and xi in English 
Traits also give many observations on the subject that throw 
sidehghts on the essay under discussion. He alludes to manners 
in his letters, most pointedly in one to Elizabeth Hoar (1848), 
printed in Cabot's A Memoir, pp. 550-552. Among the poems 
called Elements is one on manners. Quotations from the entry 
in the Journal, first cited, show that always manners interested 
Emerson both as a practical social asset and as a symbol of a 
great spiritual fact: "It certainly is worth one's while, who con- 
siders what sway elegant manners bear in society, and how 
wealth, genius and moral worth do feel their empire; it becom.es 
a clear command of reason to cultivate them. ... I speak here 
of no transient success, but of the manners of a sensible man 
when they become the chief channel in which a man's sense 
runs; of those which are the plain index of fine sense and fine 

123 



124 NOTES 

feelings, which impress all and offend none. . . . This is a species 
of second philosophy, and may be termed the philosophy of 
life." 

Introductory poems. The first four lines are from Ben Jon- 
son's Masque, Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly, the rest from 
his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue. 

Page 2, line 2. Belzoni, Giovanni Battista (1778-1823), was 
an Italian explorer of Egyptian antiquities. In 1819 he published 
in England an account of his discoveries. 

2, 1. 5. rock-Tibboos, or Tibbus ("Men of the Rocks"), a 
peculiar people that have somewhat puzzled ethnologists as 
to their race and speech. They dwell in Borku, or Borgu, a 
region between the Sahara and Sudan. 

2, 1. 9. Bomoos, inhabitants of Bornu, a country of central 
Sudan, on the south and west of Lake Chad. 

2, 1. 30. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), an EHzabethan writer 
and courtier. The "novel" referred to is Arcadia. 

2, 1. 31. Gentleman. The evolution of the gentleman in the 
modern sense is connected with the rise of the individual in 
history. The following books are offered as suggestions in 
finding material for discussing this: Gilbert Murray's Euripides 
and his Age, Cicero's Letters (E. S. Schuckburgh's translation 
in four volumes or G. E. Jean's Life and Letters of Cicero), 
Strachan-Davidson's Cicero, Mackail's Latin Literature (dis- 
cussion of suppression of liberty in literature under the emperors), 
J. H. Robinson's Petrarch, H. D. Traill's Social England (6 vol- 
umes) especially the chapters on social life, Rousseau's Social 
Contract, and J. H. Robinson's The Development of Modern 
Europe. 

5, 1. 7. Lundy's Lane, near Niagara Falls, where on July 25, 
1814, a drawn battle was fought between the Americans and the 
British. 

5, 1. 16. Lord Falkland (1610-1643), an English writer, active 
in poUtics. Emerson was much interested in the account of 
Falkland given by Clarendon; see Journal IV, 264. 

5, 1. 29. Saladin, Sapor, et cetera. Emerson is given to the 
insertion of groups of names, often containing some little known, 
but all belonging to people to whose lives he owed some flash 
of inspiration. His reverence for the individual Hes at the base 
of this study of biography. Note other examples of this practice 
in this book. 



NOTES 125 

Saladin (1138-1193), a King of Armenia, famous for his con- 
quests in Egypt, Syria, and against the Christians under Richard 
the Lionhearted of England; see Scott's Talisman. 

Sapor, a Persian monarch, either of the third or the fourth 
century A. D., who won against the Romans in the east. 

The Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bevar, a semi-mythical hero of the 
Spanish wars against the Moors in the eleventh century, became 
a hero of romances, ballads and chronicles. His name occurs 
several times in the Journal. See Southey's Chronicle of the Cid 
and Lockhart's Spanish Ballads. 

Julius Csesar (102-44 B. C), Scipio (185-129 B. C), Alexander 
(356-323 B. C), and Pericles (490-420 B. C.) are names from Plu- 
tarch's Lives of Greeks and Romans, a book which, with the Morals 
of the same author, influenced Emerson deeply. See J. and W. 
Langhorne's translation of the former, and Goodwin's edition 
of an EngUsh translation of the latter. 

Scipio, the third great bearer of the name, brother-in-law of 
the Gracchi, was one of Rome's most praised statesmen and war- 
riors in the days of her earliest foreign conquests. He was a 
patron of philosophers and poets. 

Pericles, the great Athenian statesman and patron of phil- 
osophy, art, and the drama, receives a finely imaginative inter- 
pretation in Landor's Pericles and Aspasia. 

6, 1. 10. Diogenes (412-323 B. C.), Socrates (c. 470-399 
B. C.), and Epaminondes (418-362 B. C.) were Greeks, who by 
reason of their lofty character and the circumstances of their 
lives, are apt illustrations here. Diogenes, the Cynic, and his 
frugal life are too well known to need comment. Socrates 
Emerson vividly characterizes in "Plato; or the Philosopher" 
in "Representative Men.'^ See his Apologia in Jowett's trans- 
lation of Plato's Dialogues. Epaminondes was of a noble but 
impoverished family. Primarily a general, he would yet have 
ranked high without his brilliant military career for his purity, 
uprightness, and high culture. 

6. 1, 14. My contemporaries. Edward Emerson finds him- 
self reminded by this passage of Henry Thoreau. 

7, 1. 20. Faubourg St. Germain, the section of Paris where 
lived the nobihty. 

8, 1. 1. Cortez (1485-1547), the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. 
See Prescott's Conquest of Mexico. 

Nelson (1758-1805), the British naval hero, who met his 



126 NOTES 

death at the battle of Trafalgar. See Mahan's Life of Nelson 
and Southey's Nelson. 

Napoleon (1769-1821). Emerson was singularly attracted 
to the French conqueror. There are constant references to him 
in his works. See "Napoleon; or the Man of Action" in 
Representative Men. The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800) was 
of especial importance in Napoleon's career, for it came at the 
beginning of the first consulate when republican opposition was 
gathering strongly and might, without this victory to turn the 
scale, have put an end to his power. 

8, 1. 4, Funded talent. A funded debt is one that has been 
converted into bonds redeemable in a definite period. It is 
therefore synonymous with surety of payment. 

8, 1. 28. One of the estates. This term, which really means 
one of the orders that form a state — the nobility, the clergy, and 
the people — is most commonly associated with France, where the 
three estates assembled in a body called the states-general to 
meet emergencies. The last states-general began the French 
Revolution. 

11, 1. 5. Vich Ian Vohr. See Scott's Waverley, chapter 16. 

12, 1. 3. Amphitryon, a hero of Greek mythology, subject 
of a lost tragedy by Sophocles and of comedies by Plautus and 
Moliere. From a hne in the latter's comedy, "Le veritable 
Amphitryon est I'Amphitryon oii Ton dtne," the name has 
become synonymous with a generous host. 

12, 1. 10. Tuileries, palace and garden of the late French 
empire, situated in the heart of Paris. 

12, 1. 10. Escurial, a very remarkable Spanish building of 
the late sixteenth century. It is thirty miles northwest of 
Madrid. 

13, 1. 1. Madame de Stael (1766-1817), the French novelist 
and essayist, was the most distinguished and typical product of 
the period of sensibility. 

13, 1. 8. Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), was an English 
essayist and critic. He made an English translation of the 
essays of Montaigne that took the place of the translation that 
was put out in the late seventeenth century by Cotton. It was 
the old Cotton translation, however, that fell into Emerson's 
hands in his early days out of college. 

13, 1. 9. Montaigne, Michel de (1533-1592), invented and 
perfected the essay as we know it in modern Uterature. To 



NOTES 127 

Emerson he stands as a mind excellent for its questioning attitude. 
His critical estimate of Montaigne in Representative Men is the 
most masterly in the English language 

16, 1. 32. dry light. Pure light. 

16, 1. 4. Creole natures. The Creoles of Louisiana, descen- 
dants of old French settlers, are shown in the delightful pages 
of G. W. Cable's Old Creole Days. 

16, 1. 34. Fox, Charles James (1749-1806), an English states- 
man and orator, was uniformly opposed in the years 1774-1782 
to North's project of coercion of the colonies. Later as a sup- 
porter of the French Revolution he was a sturdy opponent of 
Pitt and became exceedingly unpopular from 1790-1800. The 
scene alluded to here occurred May 6, 1791. 

18, 1. 16. like Circe. She turned the followers of Odysseus 
into swine by her magic cup. See Butcher and Lang's transla- 
tion of Homer's Odyssey, Book X. The use of "horned" gives 
a comical turn to the humor of the passage. 

18, 1. 20. Captain Symmes, a real person. All the others are 
fictitious names. Symmes claimed to have discovered a flowery 
path into the earth. 

18, 1. 31. the clerisy, the educated class, or scholars in the 
wide sense in which Emerson used that word. 

19, 1. 18. The epitaph of Sir Jenkins Grant. The source of 
this has never been traced. Mr. Edward Emerson thinks it 
unlikely that his father composed it. 

19, 1. 29. Some friend of Poland. The partition of Poland 
in 1772 among the three powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
and its constantly recurring efforts for freedom, aroused great 
interest and sympathy among the liberty lovers of Europe, 
especially after the revolt of 1830 when Europe was filled with 
Polish exiles. 

19, 1. 29. Philhellene, a lover of the Greeks. The Greek 
uprising against the Turks in 1821 roused much sympathy and 
help from other nations. The best known Philhellene was Lord 
Byron, who died in 1824 at Missolonghi, whither he had gone to 
take active part with the Greeks. 

20, L 17. "As Heaven and Earth" etc., Keats, Hyperion, 
Book II. 

20, 1. 27. Ethnical circle, a group bound together by common 
characteristics. 

22, 1. 33. Minerva, in Greek Athene, was the goddess of wis- 



128 NOTES 

dom and womanly skill. Juno, in Greek Hera, was among the 
Romans the protective principle of womanhood in maiden, wife, 
and mother. Polymnia, or Polyhymnia, was the muse of sacred 
hymns. There is probably significance in Emerson's use of 
precisely these three names as typical of the ideal woman of 
action and thought. 

23, 1. 4. Delphic Sibyls. There was a Delphian Sibyl among 
the ten mentioned by Lactantius. Plato, however, speaks of 
but one Sibyl. The most famous was the Erythraean at Cumae, 
whom iEneas consulted in the sixth book of the Mneid. It is 
probable that Emerson means the Pythian priestess who voiced 
the oracle at Delphi. 

23, 1. 15. Hafiz was the nom de plume of Shams-ud-din 
Mohammed, a native of Shiraz. He died about 1388. His 
poetry is lyrical, full of fervent love and splendid nature descrip- 
tions, which some interpret mystically; for Hafiz was a dervish. 
John Richardson brought out A Specimen of Persian Poetry in 
London in 1802, in which were translations of some of Hafiz's 
poems; but Emerson knew them through the German and the 
French. 

23, 1. 15. Firdousi was the nom de plume of Abri'l Kasim 
Mansur, a Persian poet of the tenth century A. D., who wrote a 
poetic history of Persia, ''The Book of the Kings," of which an 
English abridgment was pubhshed in London in 1832. Arnold's 
Sohrab and Rustum is one incident from the poem. Firdousi 
also wrote a Persian version of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's 
wife. 

23, 1. 29. the seven poets. Seven was a sacred number 
among the Persians. The poets referred to here are the seven 
mystics. The first died about 874 A. D., and the last 1317. 

24, 1. 10. the Golden Book, a traditionary element in fairy 
lore and tales. The Golden Book of Venice preserves the name 
today. 

25, 1. 18. Osman appears in Emerson's Journal and pubhshed 
writings as an ideal man meant to represent Emerson as he wished 
to be. 

26, 1. 2. The fable was original with Emerson. 

26, 1. 4. Silenus, a satyr of Roman mythology. 



NOTES 129 



SELF-RELIANCE 

This is an essay from the First Series, 1841. Edward Emerson, 
tracing the idea of self-reliance in his father's Journal of 1832 
makes this comment, "Thus it appears that the writings of 
Landor, read the year before Mr. Emerson sought him out 
in Rome, may have given the original push toward the writing of 
this essay on Self -Reliance." The suggestion is interesting. In 
1830, a year especially marked for new literary influences in 
Emerson's life — Goethe, Carlyle, Confucius, Zoroaster — he read 
some of Landor' s Imaginary Conversations. The characteriza- 
tions impressed him. "He has the merit of not explaining" 
he said, "he writes for the immortals." Entries on self-reliance 
began in the Journal of 1828; from 1830 they grew more numer- 
ous and closer in meaning to the ideas here. Some of this 
essay appeared in the Journal of 1832; other parts are from the 
following lectures; — Individualism from the Boston course of 
1836-37; School, Genius, Duty, from the Boston course of 1838- 
39. In connection with this read the essays on Character, 
Heroism, Politics, The American Scholar, The Divinity School 
Address. 

27. The Latin motto is from Persius, Satire I, 7. "Seek 
naught outside thyself." The first poem, from Beaumont and 
Fletcher, two of Shakespeare's most famous contemporaries, 
depicts man as the perfect master of his fate. The second, 
Emerson's own composition, is an allusion to the story of 
Romulus and Remus. It emphasizes the effect of self-reliance 
on the individual himself. The exact bearing of each on the 
lesson of the essay is worthy of study. 

27, 1. 1. Emerson strikes at the start the note of the dignity 
and importance of the individual and his place in the world. 
Compare the various ways in which the same idea is looked at 
in the paragraphs that follow. 

27, 1. 1. an eminent painter. This may mean Washing- 
ton Allston or Christopher Pearse Cranch. Both wrote 
verses as well as painted, and both were personally known to 
Emerson. 

30, 1. 23. Lethe, the underworld river of forgetfulness from 
which the dead drank that they might remember no more their 
life on earth. 

30, 1. 31. The contrast between "private" and "necessary" 



130 NOTES 

is worthy of note. The "necessary" to Emerson is what in 
man's thought and action springs from Reason. 

31, 1. 20. If I am the Devil's child etc. This extreme ex- 
pression of Emerson's independence of thought must be accepted 
with the mental reservation that he knew he was not the Devil's 
child, and so means only that he will give no one right of judgment 
over the right and wrong of his actions. " It is when a man does 
not listen to truth but to others that he is depraved and mis- 
led." Journal II, 310. 

36, 1. 9. Joseph. See Genesis XXXIX. 

36, 1. 22. Pythagoras, Socrates, etc., all suffered from opposi- 
tion, more or less violent. Pythagoras (582-500 B. C.) was 
exiled. Socrates (470-399 B. C.) was condemned to death by 
a public trial. Luther (1483-1546) was excommunicated. 
Copernicus (1473-1543) was laughed to scorn and persecuted 
by the church. Galileo (1564-1642) was imprisoned by the 
Inquisition. Newton (1642-1727) struggled long for accept- 
ance. 

36, 1. 31. acrostic. See the Dictionary. Does Emerson use 
the word correctly? 

37, 1. 1. Note the emphasis that must be given ''honest" not 
to misread this paragraph. 

38, 1. 1. Chatham. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708- 
1778), was a noted English statesman and orator, who upheld 
the rights of the Americans in opposition to Lord North. 

38, 1. 3. Adams's eye. Samuel Adams, the Revolutionary 
orator and patriot. 

39, 1. 7. Fox, George (1624-1691), was the founder of Quaker- 
ism, first known as the Friends' Society of England. Emerson 
was much impressed by the Quaker faith. He had a dear friend, 
Mary Rotch, among them. 

Wesley, John (1703-1791), was an Enghsh evangelist whose 
preaching stirred all England. He was the founder of Method- 
ism, See Southey's Lije of Wesley. 

Clarkson, Thomas (1760-1846), was the man largely instru- 
mental in the passing of an act of Parliament against the slave 
trade. 

39, 1. 8. " the height of Rome," Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 
510. 

39, 1. 24. That popular fable of the sot is a story used often. 
There are versions of it in Arabian Nights and in Shakespeare's 



NOTES 131 

Taming of the Shrew, Induction. Is its use here completely- 
appropriate? Why? 

40, 1. 5. Scanderbeg, or Iskander Bey, was really George 
Castriota (1403-1468). He was an apostate from the faith of 
Mahomet, and turned his warlike powers against the Turks. 

Gustavus II (1594-1632), the great king of Sweden, was a 
noted soldier and a wise and prudent ruler. 

40, 1. 25. Trustee. Here means the one trusted, as 
"employee" means the one employed. 

40. 1. 27. parallax. By moving from one place to another a 
person may create an apparent displacement of a heavenly 
body. To astronomers this apparent displacement furnishes a 
basis of measurement for the size and distance of the star or 
planet. "Without parallax" signifies an extreme distance; 
here it has the connotation of mystery. 

40, 1. 32. Spontaneity, Instinct, Intuition. These words are 
synonyms of Reason. See the Introduction, p. xxiv. 

41, 1. 29. perceptions Emerson uses to mean the revelations 
that come to the mind by Intuition, as opposed to knowledge 
gained by a conscious process of thought. 

43, 1. 16. David, Jeremiah, Paul stand for the authority of 
the past to which Emerson felt there w^as a too bhnd adherence. 

44, 1. 9. from man, not to man. The constant insistence on 
spiritual solitude for true independence is to be noted. 
^' 44, 1. 28. Becomes here means cessation of motion. To 
deny the active union of the Great of the past with the Reason 
of the universe is to refuse the lesson they teach. 

45, 1. 16. impure action. The divine Reason acts on men 
engaged in helpful, necessary work, often without their will. 
Pure action would mean action through a mind consciously and 
perfectly yielding itself to Intuition. 

46, 1. 27. Thor, the thundergod of the Scandinavian mythol- 
ogy, was likewise the god of warlike courage. Woden, his father, 
was the king of the gods, mighty and prudent. 

47, 1. 30. antinomianism is the opinion that Christians by 
reason of justification by faith are freed from all necessity to 
observe the Divine law. For a pleasant picture of an antinomian 
see George Borrow, Lavengro, chapter XXIII. 

50, 1. 16. Bonduca, by John Fletcher is based on the struggle 
of the Britons against the Roman legions in the first century 
A. D. The leaders were Caractacus and Boadicea, of two dif- 



132 NOTES 

ferent tribes. They appear as Caratach and Bonduca in the 
play. 

50, 1. 25. Emerson used no word superfluously; the adverb 
"foolishly" is emphatic. 

51, 1. 4. Zoroaster founded the old religion of Persia. In 
1830 Emerson became acquainted with the teachings of Zoroaster 
through the works of De Gerando and Auquetil Duperron. 

51, 1. 14. Locke, Lavoisier, etc. John Locke (1632-1704), 
author of the Essay on the Human U7ider standing and certain 
treatises on civil and religious liberty. He repudiates innate 
ideas and intuition as a source of knowledge, and substitutes a 
gradual acquisition of ideas by experience. 

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) was the founder of modern 
chemistry. He proved by experimenting with the balance 
that chemical change affects the composition without reducing 
the amount of matter. He proved also that every chemical 
change may be represented by an equation, and other facts of 
importance in regard to compounds. 

James Hutton (1726-1797) was an eminent geologist. His 
Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations appeared in 1795. 

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the great English utilitarian, 
set out in a number of remarkable books principles of moral 
legislation and political economy. His favorite phrase, which 
serves as a keynote to his teaching is "the greatest happiness 
for the greatest number." 

Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832) was a phrenologist much better 
known in Emerson's day than in ours. He died in Boston soon 
after coming there from Germany to deliver lectures. 

51, 1. 23. Calvinism, a sect of Christianity founded by John 
Calvin (1509-1564) held the behef in predestination. 

Swedenborgism was the teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg 
(1698-1772). See Emerson's essay on him in Representative Men. 

52, 1. 21. the wise man stays at home etc. 

"Nor scour the seas nor sift mankind 
A poet or a friend to find. 
Behold he watches at the door! 
Behold his shadow on the floor!" — Saadi, Emerson. 
54, 1. 11. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), the famous Elizabethan 
statesman and man of letters. His philosophical work contrib- 
uted much to arouse the spirit of careful experiment and scienti- 
fic methods in observation. His essays are among the finest in 



NOTES 133 

our language. Compare his essay on Friendship with Emerson's 
on the same subject. 

54, 1. 21. chisel of Phidias. Phidias, born about 500 B.C., was 
the greatest sculptor of Greece. The names of Phidias, The 
Egyptian, Moses, and Dante here stand for the highest inspira- 
tion in religious art, architecture and literature. 

66, 1. 8. Phocion (c.402-317 B. C), an Athenian general of 
humble birth. See Plutarch's Lives. 

Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 B. C.) was the last of the old Ionic 
philosophers, teacher to Pericles, Euripides, and possibly Soc- 
rates. He defined a new principle, mind, as working in matter. 

56, 1.16. Hudson, Henry (d.l611), a navigator who discov- 
ered the river and bay that bear his name. 

66, I. 16. Behring, Vitus (1680-1741), a Danish discoverer 
for whom Behring Strait and Sea were named. 

56, 1. 16. Parry and Franklin were Arctic explorers early in 
the last century. 

56, 1. 27. Bivouac. For Emerson's account of Napoleon's 
methods in war see Representative Men. Count de las Cases 
went with Napoleon to St. Helena and wrote an account of 
the exile, Memoriel de Ste. Helene. " Las Casas " is a mistake 
on Emerson's part. 

57, 1. 26. Caliph All (600-661) was a cousin of Mahomet, and 
his first convert. See Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. The 
maxims and poems attributed to him are pronounced by scholars 
to be largely of later origin. 

68, 1. 20. Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. That 
is the laws are themselves the judges against those who violate 
them, 

COMPENSATION 

This essay appeared in tl»e First Series, 1841. As early as 
1823 entries on this subject begin to appear in the Journal. 
The greatest interest is shown from 1830 on. The essay was 
probably not prepared as a lecture, though a little of it appeared 
in the lecture Duty of the Boston course of 1838-39. Prudence 
offers some points that bear on the subject. 

69, 1. 1. Note the union of the practical and the ideal in the 
first three paragraphs. What moral problem is to form the basis 
of the essay? "^^ 



134 NOTES 

61, 1. 20. Polarity. The word "pole," first used in a scientific 
sense to signih- the extremities of the earth's axis, came during 
the development of physics to have a much wider meaning, 
being applied to one of contrasted or opposite parts of a body- 
where a force appears to be concentrated, or to pass in or out of 
the body. For instance we have the positive and negative poles 
of a battery. From this meaning of the word was developed 
the term "polarity," the condition of a body which exhibits 
opposite powers in opposite directions. Emerson widely extends 
the meaning to include opposition or contrast in general, some- 
times very abstractly. In this and the next five paragraphs 
Emerson draws in detail the parallel between this law of polarity 
and the moral law which it symboHzes. 

62, 1. 17. Periodic or compensating errors. The planets are 
not free from the attractive influence of other planets. This 
causes periodic deviations in their orbits which are periodically 
corrected in the natural course of events by recurring changes in 
the relative positions of the planets. 

64, 1. 17. See Identity and Variety in the Introduction for 
the underlying thought in this and the next paragraph. 

65, 1. 30. Note the ideahstic view which makes the "reward 
or retribution" in the soul that of the "thing or real nature;" 
and the outer merely circumstantial or apparent. 

65, 1. 14. It is in the world, etc. cf. John 1. 

65, 1. 17. Ot kO^ol Albs del cimi-KTovai: — Sophocles, Fragments, 
LXXXIV, 2. "The dice of God fall ever aright." 

67, 1. 11. Drive out nature, etc. A Latin proverb quoted by 
Horace, Epistles I. 10, 24. 

67, I. 31. " How secret art thou;"— St. Augustine, Confes- 
sions, Book I. 

68, 1. 8. Prometheus, a hero of Greek mythology who brought 
down the fire of heaven to men and paid the penalty of his bold- 
ness by being chained to a rock and preyed upon forever by vul- 
tures. He knew a secret fatal to the throne of Zeus, who would 
free him from his torture if he would impart it. The power and 
independence of Prometheus has made him a favorite subject 
with writers of tragedy. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is a 
modern treatment of the subject. Emerson says of Prome- 
theus: "His story seems to be the first chapter of the history 
of the Caucasian race." 

68, 1. 11. " Of all the gods," etc.— iEschylus, Prometheus. 



NOTES 135 

68, 1. 19. Aurora, goddess of the dawn, in love with the Tro- 
jan prince Tithonus, brother of Priam, begged for him the boon 
of immortahty from Zeus. Forgetting to ask for immortal 
youth as well, she was forced to see her lover waste away into 
decrepit old age. Later legends say he was turned into a grass- 
hopper, or rather a cicada. 

68, 1. 20. Achilles and Thetis. This, of course, refers to the 
well-known story of the infant Achilles dipped into the River 
Styx. 

68, 1. 23. Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, vanquished 
the Nibelungs and brought off their treasure. He was killed 
from the rear by Hagen. 

68, 1. 34. Nemesis, Greek personification of the surety of 
punishment that awaits a deviation from divine laws. 

69, 1. 2. The Furies were Electo, Tisiphone, and Megaera, 
who stung and scourged those condemned in the judgment hall 
of the lower world. 

69, 1. 6. Ajax and Hector exchanged arms after a single com- 
bat in the Trojan plains. See the Ihad (Lang, Leaf and Myer's 
translation). Book VII. 

69, 1. 11. Theagenes, an athlete of the isle of Thasos. 

72, 1. 9. Polycrates. The story is from Herodotus III, 
39-45 and 120-125. Amasis, king of Egypt, was a friend and 
ally of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. Alarmed by his friend's 
unclouded fortune, he sent him word to shun the envy of the 
gods and spare to them his chiefest treasure. The tyrant lis- 
tened and threw into the sea a jewel of great price, his emerald 
ring. In six days it was drawn from the water in a fish which 
was served at the tyrant's own table. It was a fatal sign. 
Amasis hastened to break his league of friendship and ere long 
the tyranny \\ as broken and the tyrant crucified. See Herodotus, 
4 volumes, translated by G. Rawlinson. 

72, 1. 28. The highest price he can pay for a thing, etc., an 
old proverb. In the translation from Ibn Jenim Emerson wrote: 

"Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene; — 
A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen ; 
And the second, borrowed money though the smiling lender say 
That he will not demand the debt until the Judgment Day." 

75, 1. 15. " Winds blow and waters roll " etc. : — Wordsworth, 
Sonnet, September 1802. 



136 NOTES 

79, 1. 12. Presence of the soul. Emerson holds that instinc- 
tively we measure by the good or positive standard. This is a 
subsidiary proof of his belief that the good really is, and that the 
bad is nothing. 

79, 1. 32. St. Bernard (1091-1153), the famous Abbot of Clair- 
vaux and a religious writer of power in the Middle Ages. 

NATURE 

This essay belongs to the Second Series, 1844. It was pre- 
pared from the Journal rather than from the Waterville lecture 
of 1841 on the Method of Nature. Both were based on the same 
material. A lost lecture of the Boston course of 1843, Relation 
to Nature, was perhaps the real basis of this essay. The first 
essay on Nature (1836) and the whole body of Emerson's nature 
poetry are helpful supplementary reading here. Suggested 
titles from the latter are, May Day, Nature, Woodnotes, Monad- 
noc, My Garden, The Titmouse, The Sea Shore, Song of Nature, 
The Two Rivers and Waldensamkeit. The first selection in 
Mosses from an Old Manse describes in Hawthorne's words some 
of the scenes about Concord. 

The first essay on Nature gives the uses of nature to man as 
follows: I. Commodity: for food, clothing, heat, transportation, 
which binds society together, etc. II. Beauty: delight in 
natural forms, delight in noble and graceful acts, delight in the 
intellectual contemplation of the beautiful order of the universe. 
III. Language: Nature as a teacher of words, as a teacher of 
spiritual facts through natural facts by her symboHsm, and as a 
teacher of the Divine Spirit through symbolism. IV. Disci- 
pline: Nature as a discipliner of our understanding through the 
necessity of subjugating her, or of adapting ourselves to her 
inevitable course. 

83, The rounded world etc. The key to an understanding 
of this little poem by Emerson is his doctrine of Identity. 
The last two lines are an expression of his belief in the upward 
or perfecting tendency in nature. 

86, 1. 9. Villeggiatura. Such a village festival was held in 
Concord in 1840, on June 29. Of it Emerson writes: ''Today at 
the cliff we held our Villeggiatura. I saw nothing better than the 
passage of the river by that dark clump of trees that line that 
bank in one spot. As the flowing silver reached that point, it 



NOTES 137 

darkened, yet every wave celebrated its passage through the 
shade by one sparkle. But ever the direction of the sparkles 
was onward, onward." Journal V. 423. 

87, 1. 6. Versailles, the beautiful French palace and park 
near Paris. 

87, 1. 5. Paphos, an ancient city on the southwest coast of 
Cyprus, the center of the cult of Venus Aphrodite, who was 
fabled to have risen there from the foam of the sea. The ruins 
point to a city of Mycenean grandeur. 

87, 1. 5. Ctesiphon, a large village on the left bank of the Tigris 
that after 129 B. C. grew to grand proportions by reason of the 
Parthians' making it their winter quarters. One gigantic build- 
ing in ruins remains, ''the throne of Khosran." 

87, 1. 18. Apollo and Diana, the twin god and goddess, off- 
spring of Leto and Zeus. Among other powers they had as their 
province the protection of hunting. 

88, 1. 3. Tempe, the beautiful vale of Thessaly, famed in 
poetry for its natural charm. 

88, 1. 6. Como Lake, a lovely sheet of water in Lombardy, 
Northern Italy. At the south a promontory cuts it into two 
arms. 

88, 1. 13. Campagna, the plain about Rome, once covered 
with parks and country villas. 

90, 1. 16. Proteus, keeper of Poseidon's sea flocks, the famous 
old man of the sea who could change his form at will. See the 
Odyssey, Book IV. 

90, 1. 28. Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes. The former is the 
account of the creation in Genesis. The latter involves the 
theory that the earth is the center of the universe and the 
heaventy bodies revolve about it in circles. 

90, 1. 34. Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and spring- 
time. 

Fauna, companion goddess to Faunus, an early Italian god of 
rural, especially farm, life. He was the god of productive- 
ness. 

Ceres, or Demeter with the Greeks, the goddess of grain and 
later of fruits and vegetation in general. She was worshipped too 
as Mother Earth. 

Pomona, an ancient Italian goddess of fruits and gardens. 

93, 1. 16. Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), is referred to here, 
of course, for his experiments in electrical science. John Dalton 



138 NOTES 

(1766-1844) was a great English chemist. His most important 
investigations were concerning the atomic theory. Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy (1778-1829) made many important chemical dis- 
coveries. He was the inventor of the Davy lamp for miners. 
Joseph Black (1728-1799), a Scotch chemist, discovered that 
gases, which he called "fixed air," were freed from certain sub- 
stances by heating them. He thus demonstrated the existence 
of a gas distinct from common air. 

96, 1. 4. Jacob Behmen, or Boehme (1575-1624), was born 
near Gorhtz, and was for thirteen years shoemaker in that city. 
He was a mystic, not given to ecstasy, but to a confident asser- 
tion that he ''beheld" mysteries though he could not tell them as 
they really were. Inward illumination was the source of his 
great religious power. His Aurora appeared in 1610, and later 
other works of mysticism. 

George Fox. See Note on page 39, line 7. 

96, 1. 6. James Naylor (c. 1617-1660), a soldier and preacher 
in the army of the Roundheads. George Fox converted him to 
Quakerism. He let popularity turn his head, and accepted 
the names of Christ from his followers. He was pilloried, 
whipped, branded, and imprisoned. Later, repentant, he 
was received back into Quakerism. His memoirs were reissued 
in 1800. 

97. 1. 28. What deductions can be made from the remainder 
of this paragraph as to Emerson's views of society? Compare 
with the Essays on Manners and Self-reliance. 

100, 1. 8. (Edipus was the hero of the famous Theban legend. 
He solved the riddle of the Sphinx and freed the Thebans from the 
monster, receiving from Creon the boon that involved himself 
and his family in a horrible destiny. The bitterness of his lot 
made his story an attractive theme for Greek tragedy. There 
are five extant tragedies on the subject. 

FRIENDSHIP 

This essay belongs to the First Series, 1841. It contains por- 
tions of the following lectures — Society, from the Boston course 
of 1836-37, The Heart from the Boston course of 1838-39, and 
Private Life from the course of 1839-40. In connection with 
this essay suggestive reading is found in Social Aims, Love, Dis- 
cipline, Heroism. 



NOTES 139 

103. A ruddy drop, etc. In this poem of Emerson is struck 
a note of dependence on others which is often lacking in his 
writings. Reconcile the views here expressed with the emphasis 
he lays later in the essay on the aloofness of the individual. 

105, 1. 2. Emerson's high ideal of the individual brought him 
often disappointment in his relations with men. ''I never get 
used to men : they always awaken expectations in me which they 
always disappoint." — Journal III, 100. ''Bacon, Shakespeare, 
Caesar — none of them will bear examination or furnish the type 
of a man." — Journal II. 505. The idea recurs often. See 
English Traits and Representative Men. 

106, 1. 21. "crush the sweet poison of misused wine" ; — Milton, 
Comus. 

107, 1. 16. Elysian temple would be a temple of the blest in 
the Elysian fields, the abode of deathless heroes. 

107, 1. 24. Egyptian skull. From Plutarch comes the story 
that the Egyptians enlivened their feasts by passing a mummy 
at the close to remind the guests that all must die. 

108, 1. 1. a poor Greek, that is a man of taste and sensibility, 
tolDe measured by his soul, rather than his outer trappings. 

108, 1. 3. that vast shadow of the Phenomenal. A friend, 
incomparably beyond all else in the world, is yet mysteriously 
felt a something outside one's being, a symbol only of what the 
soul itself is. The elusiveness of friendship in this profound 
sense has been variously treated by poets. See Browning, Love 
in a Life. 

109, 1. 33. "The valiant warrior" etc.:— Shakespeare, 
Sonnet XXV. 

Ill, 1. 4. an Olympian refers to one trained by the rigorous 
course that the rules prescribed and presenting himself as a 
competitor in the famous Olympian games in Elis, Greece. 

Ill, 1. 30. I know a man etc. Edward Emerson is an author- 
ity for the statement that this is a reference to Jones Very. 
Emerson offers most interesting and sympathetic comments on 
this curious Transcendental poet. The Centenary Edition 
quotes two passages, and in the Journal appear several others. 
One of the most interesting of the latter reads in part as follows : — 
"Entertain every thought, every character that goes by with the 
hospitahty of your soul. . . . Especially if one of these mono- 
tones, whereof, as my friends think, I have a savage society, 
like a menagerie of monsters, come to you, receive him. For 



140 NOTES 

the partial action of his mind in one direction is a telescope for 
the objects on which it is pointed." — Journal V. 98. 

113,1.3. "I" offer myself" etc.:— Montaigne I. XXXIX. 
(See his Essay on Friendship in comparison with Emerson's.) 

116, 1. 27. pottage. See Genesis XXV. 

119, 1. 24. Janus-faced. Janus, the old Latin god, had two 
faces. 



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